Toward a unified psychological science

Mariano Yela

pp. 241-274

in: Arthur W. Staats, Leendert Mos (eds), Annals of theoretical psychology, Berlin, Springer, 1987

Abstract

Psychology is a plethoric, frustrating, and divided science, partially, because of its youth and complexity; fundamentally, because of a basic dualism of data: private experience and public behavior. This dualism is not incompatible with unity. The historical and epistemological development of scientific psychology converges on a notion of science as a body of knowledge empirically and experimentally verifiable and falsifiable through autocorrective research programs, and on a notion of its subject matter as behavior. Behavior is conceived of as physical action that is biologically and/or personally meaningful. The grounds for a unified psychological science are given by the unity of its subject matter: behavior as meaningful physical action, and by the unity of its method: verification of public behavior. Unity is possible! Whether it will be attained is doubtful. It depends on the actual strategies of research, teaching, intervention, and organization, which today favor a reinforcing system for fragmentation and disunity.