Abstract
In his article “Is psychology based on a methodological error?” and based on a quite convincing empirical basis, Michael Schwarz offers a methodological critique of one of mainstream psychology’s key test theoretical axioms, i.e., that of the in principle normal distribution of personality variables. It is characteristic of this paper—and at first seems to be a strength of it—that the author positions his critique within a frame of philosophy of science, particularly positioning himself in the tradition of Karl Popper’s critical rationalism. When scrutinizing Schwarz’s arguments, however, we find Schwarz’s critique profound only as an immanent critique of test theoretical axioms. We raise doubts, however, as to Schwarz’s alleged ‘challenge’ to the philosophy of science because the author not at all seems to be in touch with the state of the art of contemporary philosophy of science. Above all, we question the universalist undercurrent that Schwarz’s ‘bio-psycho-social model’ of human judgment boils down to. In contrast to such position, we close our commentary with a plea for a context- and culture sensitive philosophy of science.
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Notes
Another reason is, of course, a general caveat that is in place against teleological interpretations of Darwin’s theory of evolution. One of Darwin’s main merits against creationism was the introduction of randomness into natural history. Metaphysical semantics are utterly unthinkable for any serious evolutionary thinking. It was only the Social Darwinists and the eugenicists that followed Darwin—but who Darwin himself was not in line with—who believed that evolution had a plan, a meaning or a telos of some sort.
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Acknowledgement
The authors wish to thank the research group at the Institute of Cultural Psychology and Qualitative Social Research (IKUS) in Vienna, especially Markus Brunner, Katharina Hametner, Stefan Hampl, Markus Wrbouschek and Julia Riegler, for fruitful discussions of the target article (Schwarz 2009).
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Ruck, N., Slunecko, T. A Stale Challenge to the Philosophy of Science. Integr. psych. behav. 44, 168–175 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-010-9121-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-010-9121-z