Psychology, Science, and Life

Sometimes I get the sense that many of my students--especially those in Psych 60T and Psych 144-- think the only thing I care about is science or that I think that science is the only legitimate approach to understanding things.

But this is pretty far from the truth. I'm interested in all sorts of non-scientific things. For example, I love to read novels and play the guitar and banjo. And I do these things not because scientific research has proved them to be beneficial to people's health or happiness, but because I enjoy them. In the case of novels, I believe that the good ones also give me new ways to understand the world, including myself. And playing the banjo gives me a sense of accomplishment and helps define who I am.

I'm also interested in a lot of big philosophical questions, including ones about the nature of knowledge (e.g., What does it mean to know something? How do we know what we know?) and even the limitations of science. I'm extremely interested in ethics. How should we behave? Is it right for me to have as much money, food, and stuff as I have while there are billions of people in the world who have nothing ... and in fact are starving to death? (I feel pretty sure the answer is "no" but I'm not at all sure what to do about it.)

And I certainly didn't choose my spouse according to some computer algorithm or plan my family based on some scientific principle. (Maybe that explains why my two kids are a high school freshman and a kindergartener.)

I suspect that no one would be surprised by a chemistry professor who is "scientific" when doing and teaching chemistry but who has a wide variety of other interests and approaches to life. But it seems that taking a strong scientific approach to psychology implies a severely stunted world view. "If the guy can reduce questions about even love to numbers and graphs, then he must have some kind of a problem."

But here's a news flash. I'm not a literature, music, or philosophy professor. I'm a psychology professor. And psychology, by definition, is the scientific study of human behavior. Who says it's scientific? Well, the American Psychological Association, for starters. And just about every introductory textbook that's out there. The entire faculty in psychology at Fresno State says so, as do the faculty at just about every other university you can think of. Even Wikipedia says so!

So that's what I teach--psychology as an empirical science. And I bring into the classroom all the assumptions and attitudes that go along with that: empiricism, skepticism, and so on.

But I am not trying to convince anyone that science is the only legitimate approach to understanding things--least of all human behavior. What I do want is for my students to understand the scientific approach itself and appreciate it for what it does well: establishing general principles about the way things are. (More on this soon, I hope.)

OK, I've got to go put on my lab coat and safety goggles and then fire up the ol' Bunsen burner. Just kidding, of course. I think I'll play my banjo and listen to the birds sing.