Introduction

Psychology was one of the last of the special sciences to separate from the parent, remaining part of philosophy until the nineteenth century. From 1930 to the 1960s psychology was greatly influenced by the ideals of logical positivism, and it remains influential through the concept of operational definition. Although the conceptual foundations of psychology are to be found in philosophy, the inspiration for the creation of an independent science of psychology came from biology. The founders of psychology hoped that, by taking a path to the mind through physiology, what had been speculative philosophy and religion might become naturalistic science. This chapter discusses the granddaddy of syntactic views, the Received View on Theories, which has greatly influenced psychology. It briefly considers the semantic view of theories as models and focuses on the naturalistic viewpoint of rationality. The chapter also presents some key concepts discussed in this book.