Abstract

CASTANON, Gustavo Arja. Psychology as modern science: historical vetoes and current status. Temas psicol. [online]. 2009, vol.17, n.1, pp. 21-36. ISSN 1413-389X.

The history of modern psychology has been the history of a long and persistent scientificity crisis. Three different groups of arguments have being used along that history as obstacles to the possibility of the constitution of psychology as modern science. The first group is composed by the philosophical arguments against the modern science. Questioning the psychology specifically, we have other two groups, the ontological arguments and the methodological ones. In the ontological, we have the problems of the no quantitative nature of psychology object; simultaneity of subject and object condition; indivisibility of the psychic phenomenon; inexistence of proper object; alteration of the human being by interaction; meaning as true psychological object; free will and the need of adoption of a different method from the one of the natural science. In the methodological group of arguments, we have the allegations of the impossibility of direct observation; methodological difficulty of quantification; ethical limitations for the research and the enormous amount of variables involved in the psychological explanation. Many of these problems were overcome along this discipline history, but some of them are still waiting today for philosophical solution, what makes modern psychology an unfinished project of science.

Keywords : Modern science; Epistemology; Epistemology of psychology; Modern psychology; Philosophy of psychology.

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