The Search for Laws
What is Science? At various times in history, influential individuals (such as Galileo and Kant) have claimed that psy- chology could never be a science because of its concern with subjective experience. Many natural scientists still believe this, and some psychologists would not argue with them. How a history of psy- chology is written will be influenced by whether psychology can be considered a science. To answer the question of whether psychology is a science, however, we must first define science.
Science came into existence as a way of answer- ing questions about nature by examining nature directly rather than by depending on church dogma, past authorities, folk theories, or logical analysis alone. From science’s inception, its ultimate author- ity has been empirical observation (that is, the direct observation of nature), but there is more to science than simply observing nature. To be useful, observations must be organized or categorized in some way, and the ways in which they are similar to or different from other observations must be noted. After noting similarities and differences among observations, many scientists take the additional step of attempting to explain what they have observed. Science, then, is often characterized as having two major components: (1) empirical observation and (2) theory. According to Hull (1943), these two aspects of science can be seen in the earliest efforts of humans to understand their world:
