Review of: "On the Meaning of Psychological Concepts: Is There Still a Need for Psychological Concepts in the Empirical Sciences?"
Year: 2023
Type: peer-review
Abstract: Potential competing interests: No potential competing interests to declare. In this treacherous worldNothing is the truth nor a lie. Everything depends on the colorOf the crystal through which one sees it. Pedro Calderón de la BarcaTo begin with, I would like to explain why I titled my paper 'reflections' and not 'opinion' or 'review'.Because I don't feel smarter than Dr. Mika Suojanen, and therefore I don't feel qualified to point out what's right and wrong.His article simply prompted me to take a closer look at the psychological and cognitive aspects of human behaviour as a kind of fleeting glance at the much more general problem of the relationship between philosophy, psychology and anthropokinetics; the latter is my main field of interest.The question asked by Dr. Mika Suojanen is undoubtedly provocative.Science as a whole, as well as its individualdisciplines, are 'woven' from theories.The world is too complex to be understood in all its complexity, hence simplifiedimages -theories -are necessary to understand it.However, for any theory to become reasonable and useful, it must be somehow connected to facts, experimental or observed, in what may be called 'free reality.'More precisely, somefragment of reality which is the area of interest of a given discipline of science.'Fragment' -because no theory, which bydefinition is a simplification, can be fully universal.Therefore, in the 'tangible' reality we are dealing with facts, and inthe heights of abstraction -with theories, by means of specific interpretations somehow related to the facts.Nevertheless, "since the seventeenth century, modern science has been possible only to the extent that theoretical progress precedes experiment" [Sorman, 1993, p. 61].Physicists are in the best situation.Their 'fact field' is relatively easy to observe, and the theory is placed not very high on the abstraction scale.In addition, they have a very elegant and user-friendly tool for combining facts and building theories based on them: mathematics.In this field of human knowledge, the 'Queen of Sciences' creates a very reliable and
Source: Qeios
DOI: 10.32388/c36b7t
Author: Waclaw Petrynski
Language: English
Subfield: General Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4387119238