fostel@ncsu.UUCP (11/17/83)
First, lets not revive the Rational Psychology debate. It died of natural causes, and we should not disturb its immortal soul. However, F Montalvo has said something very unpleasant about me, and I'm not quite mature enough to ignore it. I was not making an idle attack, nor do I do so with superficial knowledge. Further, I have made quite similar statements in the presence of the enemy -- card carrying psychologists. Those psychologists whose egos are secure often agree with the assesment. Proper scientific method is very hard to apply in the face of stuuning lack of understanding or hard, testable theories. Most proper experiments are morally unacceptable in the pschological arena. As it is, there are so many controls not done, so many sources of artifact, so much use of statistics to try to ferret out hoped for correlations, so much unavoidable anthropomorhism. As with scholars such as H. Dumpty, you can define "science" to mean what you like, but I think most psychological work fails the test. One more thing, Its pretty immature to assume that someone who disagrees with you has only superficial knowledge of the subject. (See, I told you I was not very mature ....) ----GaryFostel----