ABSTRACT

This book examines the origins, presence, and implications of scientistic thinking in psychology. Scientism embodies the claim that only knowledge attained by means of natural scientific methods counts as valid and valuable. This perspective increasingly dominates thinking and practice in psychology and is seldom acknowledged as anything other than standard scientific practice. This book seeks to make this intellectual movement explicit and to detail the very real limits in both role and reach of science in psychology. The critical chapters in this volume present an alternative perspective to the scholarly mainstreams of the discipline and will be of value to scholars and students interested in the scientific status and the philosophical bases of psychology as a discipline.

chapter 3|15 pages

On Scientism in Psychology

Some Observations of Historical Relevance

chapter 4|10 pages

Why Science Needs Intuition

chapter 5|16 pages

Scientism and Saturation

Evolutionary Psychology, Human Experience, and the Phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion

chapter 7|22 pages

Science and Society

Effects, Reactions, and a Call for Reformation

chapter 8|13 pages

Beyond Scientism

Reaches in Psychology Toward a Science of Consciousness