donald (06/16/82)
Some of the comments about "technical people" (engineers and us computer
scientists) vs. (pinko) social scientists, and psychology as a black art
vs. computer science as a REAL science are amazingly silly and narrowminded.
First of all, computer science is not as close to engineering as one might
think. I hardly think automata theory, complexity theory, and programming
methodology, etc., qualify as technical fields, any more than quantum
mechanics does.
There appears to be semantic confusion as to what constitutes a "science".
Strictly speaking, a "science" is a discipline which attempts to develop
a paradigm of the physical world (sometimes known as "reality"), using what
is commonly called the "scientific method" as a tool. Thus, mathematics
and much of "computer science" are not sciences. Neither is engineering
or programming: they are merely exercises in technology, or applied uses
of scientific results. So Andy Tannenbaum really didn't have to get upset...
To Laura & pcmcgeer: just because psychology presently lacks Hari Seldon and
psychohistory does not mean that it is not a valid science. Psychology appears
to be an organized discipline utilizing scientific methodology, so it qualifies
as a science, albeit still in the infant stages. After all, by your criteria
it would seem that Physics is not a science because we can't agree on how many
quarks there are and lack a unified field theory!
The social sciences are concerned with developing a theory of humans and
human society, a very restricted, but important, subset of the physical world.
One might argue that pyschology and the other social sciences (which the
technical heathen of usenet disdain so much) are the MOST important of all the
sciences, for they are concerned ultimately with HUMANS (i.e. people!), and
that is hardly ignoble. Useneters seem more concerned with Dei ex machina
than members of their own species.
Don Chan (utcsrgv!donald)
P.S. This flame is all the more surprising coming from me, a technical guy
with aspirations to the physical sciences, and mostly ignorant of the
social sciences.donald (06/17/82)
Re: Laura's (utzoo!laura) reply to my reply. I think you have confused the distinctions between PSYCHOLOGY and PSYCHIATRY. They have the same relationship to each other as a biologist has to a doctor. Psychology is the (at present fledgling) science which attempts to develop a theory of human behaviour and the mind. Although it is a young science with rapidly fluctuating theories, that in no way equates it with Alchemy. Psychologists are real scientists, regardless of whether they eat quiche. Psychology has tried to force anything on anybody. It is the psychiatrists who attempt to apply the fledgling theories of psychology that you complain about. But your furor should not be be directed to either psychologists or psychiatrists, but to the people that go to them. I don't see what you are so paranoid about, the situation is no different than in the medical profession, although I would agree that psychiatrists are roughly at the point where doctors were when they were still bleeding people with leeches! Your complaints about rival and contradictory psychological theories and their transient natures are irrelevant. That is the way of science. Half a century ago people were saying "Light is a particle" while other people were saying "Light is a wave". In astronomy we had Big Bang and Steady State. Theories are proposed and discarded in the arena (or to quote Sagan, "Science is a self-correcting process"). Faith has little to do with it. Anyway, rather than clutter up net.misc with our verbose flames, I'll move this discussion to mail if you are agreeable. Don Chan (utcsrgv!donald)