ABSTRACT
Throughout its modern history, the notion of what constitutes legitimate scientific activity—and what relationship clinical practice should have to this conception of science—has been a topic of discussion in the music therapy literature. For perhaps the first 40 years of this history, comprising the period 1945–1985, music therapists accepted a narrow, conventional notion of science inherited from behaviorism, along with the associated idea that clinical practice should rest upon a firm research foundation. This was evident in frequent published exhortations to meet the standards of medical practitioners dating back to the 1950s (Aigen, 1991b). The current arguments for meeting the standards of evidence-based practice are merely the latest manifestation of this position.
