een <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [tips] "Laws" in psychology
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)"
Date: Wednesday, August 13, 2008, 5:30 AM
Jim Dougan wrote:
At 10:03 PM 8/12/2008, Michale Smith wrote:
Surely there are laws in other fields;
On Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:03:57 -0700 (PDT), Michael Smith wrote:
> Surely there are laws in other fields; e.g. Boyle's law for
> gasses; the laws of thermodynamics; the law of gravity; the inverse square
law
> of light. It would seem that a law should be able to be defined and not at
the
> whim
Jim Dougan wrote:
> At 10:03 PM 8/12/2008, Michale Smith wrote:
>
>
>> Surely there are laws in other fields; e.g.
>> Boyle's law for gasses; the laws of
>> thermodynamics; the law of gravity; the inverse
>> square law of light.
There may well be. That is a distinct issue from whether the t
I made a slip in the last sentence of my previous posting. It should have
read:
But from a teaching perspective it would seem a bit odd (to me at least) to
present the above relationship as "Boyle's theory", which has a connotation
of some uncertainty which is not warranted (as a generalisation th
Stuart McKelvie:
>I wonder if he or someone else can enlighten us if physics
>has a special meaning for "law"?
Chris Green:
>Darwin's and Einstein's "theories" are far broader and scope
>and far more firmly established than *anything* in psychology,
>and yet they are not called "laws." More tha
At 10:03 PM 8/12/2008, you wrote:
>Surely there are laws in other fields; e.g.
>Boyles law for gasses; the laws of
>thermodynamics; the law of gravity; the inverse
>square law of light. It would seem that a law
>should be able to be defined and not at the whim
>of whomever: Something like a
consistent across conditions—and I don’t think psychology has any such stable
relationships which ‘always hold’.
--Mike
--- On Tue, 8/12/08, Christopher D. Green <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: Christopher D. Green <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [tips] "Laws" in psycholog
On 12 Aug 2008 at 13:58, Christopher D. Green wrote:
> Psychologists, sad to say, have often been a little over-reaching in
> their assertions of certainty, and so have occasionally claimed "laws" > in
> an attempt to boost their scientific status.
Such is the case for the Yerkes-Dodson Law, whi
You are free to define it however you would like Gary. My point was only
that it has not been used in a consistent way, either in psychology, or
in the rest of natural science. So the question of why claim A is called
a "law" and claim 2 isn't turns out to be more of an fuzzy historical
questio
So psychologists conclude there are no scientific laws (in psych?) in the sense
of established, reliable relationships, or that the word is meaningless in
psychology? I take it the latter is the popular consensus? A scientific law
or principle in psychology is the same as theory or theoretica
Thanks Chris. I think you're right that arguing over whether we
should refer to psychological findings - even solidly replicatable
ones - as laws is not worth our time. It looks like the word "law" is
used too indescriminantly by scientists and non-scientists alike.
Michael
Michael Britt
On Aug 12, 2008, at 10:19 AM, Christopher D. Green wrote:
> Why would these be "laws" and, say, the graphs associated with Skinner's
> schedules of reinforcement, not be? Why are these "laws" and Flynn's
> discoveries about the rise in intelligence an "effect"? (an "effect" of
> what? time?)
Paul
Dear Tipsters
Wise counsel from Chris, who has the historical perspective on this
question.
I wonder if he or someone else can enlighten us if physics has a special
meaning for "law"?
Stuart
I don't think that "law" denotes anything particularly fundamental in
psychology (other than the fact
One reason might be that Flynn's observations are restricted to one
specific situation, whereas Skinner's have been shown to generalize
across situations.
On Aug 12, 2008, at 10:19 AM, Christopher D. Green wrote:
Why would these be "laws" and, say, the graphs associated with
Skinner's
sch
I don't think that "law" denotes anything particularly fundamental in
psychology (other than the fact that the author decided to
ostentatiously name his or her idea a "law" rather than a "principle," a
"theory" or a "conjecture").
Also, I may be wrong, but I think that Weber only had a "fracti
I do not disagree with you, but it raises the question of what a "law" shuld
mean. Is it simply a relationship that is well-established, highly replicable
and beyond doubt, or there something more?
Stuart
I don't know - saying that something that is a "relationship" can be
referred to as a
Please note that what are referred as laws in psychology are really
"principles" Principles allow for experimental verification but laws may
not.
Michael Sylvester,PhD
Daytona Beach,Florida
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I don't know - saying that something that is a "relationship" can be
referred to as a "law" is a little too mushy a definition for my tastes.
Michael
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.thepsychfiles.com
On Aug 12, 2008, at 10:24 AM, Stuart McKelvie wrote:
> Dear Michael,
>
> This may only throw a huge spa
Well, I would certainly include Fechner's and Weber's laws.
At 09:14 AM 8/12/2008, you wrote:
In a recent episode of my podcast I stated that contrary to the
advocates of The Secret (who claim that the "law of attraction" is a
"fundamental law in psychology"), I knew of only two concepts in
psy
Dear Michael,
This may only throw a huge spanner in the works, but McBurney and White's book
on research methods use the term "law" as equivalent to "relationship". So, for
example, the frustration-aggression hypothesis is a law for them. There would
be many "laws" with this approach!
Stuart
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