Is Psychology a real science?

[ScottySatan]

Assuming your "short answer" and "long answer" post is the one you are talking about, then I think it's a pretty good answer but am not sure about 2 points:
1) As I said, I don't think the precision vs. accuracy distinction holds
2) I don't see science as limited to the study of nature.

Spoiler: the details

The term's history can (thankfully) be seen in full even without OED access as someone put it up here. It began and still is primarily a branch of learning which relies on logic; a theoretical framework within which to judge the veracity of a theory or theorem or hypothesis; and which develops models that are used for prediction, understanding some system, and/or understanding some aspect or process of some system.

Your number 1 is misguided. This distinction is just a way to extract more information from numbers. You are free to discount its existence. But A, it really does exist, in spades. Google will prove it to you; and B, this is a minor technical detail. The truth or falseness of this is trivial to the question, to the forum, to the universe, unless you're analyzing data for a day. However, respectfully, your point number 1 betrays serious ignorance on your part.

point number 2, I'm not so attached to this definition. I was taught in grade school by a non-scientist that science is the study of nature. That's my favorite definition so far. I can do without it if something better comes along. What's your definition?

 

[CaptainNobody]

They already have English.

Other nations don't come close to how widely used English is. Spanish is a regional language throughout all of South America, except Brazil.
Modern Standard Arabic is spoken throughout the Middle East, and Hindi is understood by a large percent of India's population. Mandarin is also becoming increasingly important in Asia.

No other languages even come close to those.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Your number 1 is misguided. This distinction is just a way to extract more information from numbers. You are free to discount its existence. But A, it really does exist, in spades.

I don't discount it. I discount your messing it up:

There is an entire mathematical field devoted to this: numerical analysis. It is a subfield of analysis (and thus deals with measure theory and topology). Approximation Theory (and, depending on who you ask, perturbation theory) fall under numerical analysis. It's about (among other things) formalizing concepts that one touches on in calculus (the intro to analysis)

From the Sage Encyclopedia of Research Design:
"The term precision refers to how precisely an object of study is measured. Measurements of an object can be made with various degrees of precision. The amount of precision will vary with the research requirements. For example, the measurement of baby ages requires a more precise measurement than that of adult ages; baby ages are measured in months, whereas adult ages are measured in years.
The term precision also refers to the degree to which several measurements of the same object show the same or similar results. In this regard, precision is closely related to reliability. The closer the results of measurements, the more precise the object measurement is. Measurement with high precision is very likely to produce the same and predictive results."

We also find "Precision is also a function of error due to chance variability or random errors."

and numerous others in various Sage dictionaries and encyclopedias that I never used until a recent thread here (I can access them online, which I didn't even know). Because within research, textbooks, volumes, and monographs devoted to precision one finds constant application to computer science and engineering, which use the mathematical definition and which you've excluded from the sciences. And which don't you've messed up precision completely.

However, respectfully, your point number 1 betrays serious ignorance on your part.

"In the geographic sciences, as in mathematics, precision refers to the number of significant digits, exactness, or detail to which a value has been reliably measured."

Let's contrast this definition (from the Sage Encyclopedia of Geographic Information Science) with yours:

I said precision and exactness are the same thing. I'm saying accuracy and precision are different. Accuracy is whether or not something is correct, precision is...exactness. "The numerical value of Pi is around 3, definitely closer to 3 than to 10". That was accurate and imprecise. "Pi is equal to 112.2121212". That was precise and inaccurate.

"as in mathematics". I have a few volumes on this subject yet I wonder why they tend to be devoted to computer science. And I wonder why precision is all about formalizing your definition of accuracy and has nothing to do with your definition of precise.

Back to Encyclopedia of Research Methods:
"Precision and Accuracy
Precision is an important criterion of measurement quality and is often associated with accuracy. In experimental sciences. including social and behavioral sciences, there is low precision, low accuracy; low precision, high accuracy; high precision, low accuracy; and high precision, high accuracy. The measurement with high precision and high accuracy is certainly a perfect measurement that can hardly be made. The best measurement that can be made is to come as close as possible within the limitations of the measuring instruments."

 

[ScottySatan]

Jesus Christ. If you really did google this, I believe you're being dishonest now. Google overwhelmingly supports me on this. You know this was like, the least important thing I said in my first post?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Jesus Christ. If you really did google this, I believe you're being dishonest now.

I didn't google it. I actually do have several volumes on mathematical precision, because numerical analysis and approximation theory interest me. And I quoted from actual scientific reference material while you talked about google searches.

 

[ScottySatan]

I didn't google it. I actually do have several volumes on mathematical precision, because numerical analysis and approximation theory interest me. And I quoted from actual scientific reference material while you talked about google searches.

Hmm, please humor me then, what subject were these books on? Not the title, but the subject? Was it numerical analysis and approximation theory? What kind of people wrote them? What was their profession? Did you say they were mathematicians? Also, what country were they from? Please post the bibliography. I might now what's going on here.

Also, google links to scientific publications. Don't dis a good google search. Try it.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Hmm, please humor me then, what subject were these books on? Not the title, but the subject? Was it numerical analysis and approximation theory? What kind of people wrote them? What was their profession? Did you say they were mathematicians? Also, what country were they from? Please post the bibliography. I might now what's going on here.

Also, google links to scientific publications. Don't dis a good google search. Try it.

First, a good google search is using google scholar. It's good on it's own, but if you have a university library that is synched up with it than you can log into various databases that google knows you have access to (it's not always right, but it definitely simplifies things).

As for the books.

Numerical analysis is a subject. Traditionally, Analysis (of which Numerical analysis is a branch) is one of the few main mathematical sciences, although the distinctions are so lost at this point that I don't even recall what they are. However, calculus is the first step in analysis (I believe that in addition to analysis, the other disciplines included geometry and algebra, but I recall there being four...). Thanks to several centuries from Newton onwards, we've moved passed Riemann integrals into measure theory (although the former is still taught for needless reasons). Lebesque integrals, topology, and measure theory are the bulk of analysis. Numerical analysis is now an umbrella category under which various separate but related approximation methods for different kinds of problems fall. Both the reals and the rational numbers (a subset of the reals) are dense, but the former is infinitely more dense and is uncountable. Which means that precision becomes extremely important as the limiting process, despite significant achievements, is still idealized. In order for a computing device to carry it out, it requires some sort of approximation. Numerical analysis covers the various ways in which this is done for different types of issue.

As for the bibliographies (in no particular order):

Stoer, J., & Bulirsch, R. (2002). Introduction to numerical analysis (Vol. 12). Springer.

Kress, R. (1998). Numerical analysis (Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol. 181).

Burden, R. L., & Fsires, J. D. (2011). Numerical Analysis. Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning.

Zarowski, C. J. (2004). An introduction to numerical analysis for electrical and computer engineers. Wiley-Interscience.

Stepanets, A. I. (2005). Methods of approximation theory. De Gruyter Mouton

Katō, T. (1995). Perturbation theory for linear operators (Vol. 132). Springer Verlag

Conte, S. D., & Boor, C. W. D. (1980). Elementary numerical analysis: an algorithmic approach. McGraw-Hill Higher Education

Atkinson, K. E., & Han, W. (2009). Theoretical numerical analysis: a functional analysis framework (Vol. 39). Springer

There are a few more I know I have someone (one on ordinary differential equations and the other on partial), but I hope this list can at least give you enough to malign my credibility again. Let me know if you'd like other sources that I should trade in for a google search.

 

[Penumbra]

I think my posts have already covered much of what I had to say on this topic. Classification of certain areas of study is certainly an interesting question, but it doesn't necessarily mean that certain areas are less noble areas of studies than others.

One more thing I'll point out is that universities tend to organize their colleges and departments in various ways. My undergraduate university had, among other colleges, a college of liberal arts and a college of science, and the department of psychology was in the college of liberal arts. My graduate university had among other colleges, a college of science and mathematics, and a college of humanities and social sciences, and the department of psychology was organized under the college of science and mathematics.

Whenever a school has a college of science (whether it's stand-alone or combined with others), departments of chemistry, physics, etc. will virtually always be listed there. But fields like psychology and economics can sometimes be found organized with sciences, and sometimes found organized apart from the sciences and in the liberal arts area or somewhere else.