ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses what is meant by reliable and extraordinary knowledge. It explores the origin of this knowledge in ordinary knowledge and the origin, in principle at least, of scientific psychology in ordinary psychology. Scientific inquiry begins with phenomena available to ordinary observers. Ordinary languages - English, French, Spanish, and the like - are the languages used in the daily interchange of people living within particular geographical boundaries. Investigators in the pristine sciences adopt ordinary knowledge when they use ordinary language in the early stages of inquiry. Scientific languages differ from ordinary language because their vocabularies consist of nonordinary terms and phrases and of ordinary terms and phrases with nonordinary meanings. Terms such as language behavior allow psychologists to avoid giving consensible expression to the concrete particulars of interest. Ordinary psychology consists of culturally-shared ways of talking about what we do, say, think, and feel in the conduct of our daily lives. Greek thinkers had psychological, physical, and biological theories.
