I know I'm late with this entry, but I can't resist going on record with my opinions on this interesting topic. Also, I'm looking forward to the opportunity to once again crush others to dust rather than engaging in discussion. Get out that vacuum cleaner!
To no one's surprise, I vote in the negative. While it's true that science is a modern concept and none of us can fully define it to anyone else's satisfaction, there are certain criteria for which there is more-or-less agreement. The more of these that are fulfilled, the more certain we are that the person really functions as a scientist. These include such things as empirical investigation and systematic collection of data (with safeguards against bias), generation of testable predictions and falsifiability, the willingness to accept that one can be wrong based on experimental results, the incorporation of the advances of other scientists in one's work, the demonstration that the theory which is generated produces results of long-lasting and real value. Freud fails (miserably) on all of these. So I can say with confidence that I know scientists, and Sigmund Freud was no scientist. What he produced were fairy tales, X-rated and unsuited for children, but fairy tales nevertheless. Interestingly, an early critic of Freud, Percival Bailey, did conclude that Freud was a scientist, but briefly. He gave a conference presentation titled "Sigmund Freud: Scientific Period (1873-1897). In answer to a question why he stopped so early in Freud's career, he replied: "If you will accept the term science in the sense of Naturwissenschaft, or _natural_ science, Freud didn't do any more "natural scientific" research after 1897. He ended there. After that what he did was speculate. He never tried to subject any of his ideas to experimental tests, and furthermore, he was quite hostile to the suggestion...So I stopped at 1897 because that was the last time that he wrote a scientific paper in the sense of Naturwissenschaft". (Bailey, 1964). And while citing authorities on the matter, I have an unassailable source on the question, the greatest authority on Freud that ever lived. I speak not of Peter Gay, Frank Sulloway, Frederick Crews, Frank Cioffi, or even Allen Esterson. I speak of...the great man himself, who said, in a rare moment of honesty: "You often estimate me too highly. For I am actually not at all a man of science, not an observer, not an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistador--an adventurer, if you want it translated" (Freud, letter to Wilhelm Fliess Feb 1, 1900--and I thank A. Esterson for locating the source in his TIPS post of Jan 28/05). I also agree that the Rosenzweig-Freud correspondence is most revealing of Freud's attitude to science. He slaps the eager young Rosenzweig down for suggesting that his claim to have experimentally verified repression is in any way necessary, that he [Freud] "cannot put much value on such confirmations because the abundance of reliable observations on which these propositions rest [untrue, because he had no such "reliable observations"] makes them independent of experimental verification". Then he gives the equivalent of a Trudeauesque shrug of dismissal, "Still, it can do no harm" (Rosenzweig, 1992). Get lost, Rosenzweig! BTW, a photograph of the famous letter [written in German] is reproduced in Rosenzweig (1992). Some time ago I tried to find out where the letter was, as I had seen the same photograph in an book by Weiner with the note "Sigmund Freud Copyrights, London". But the acting director of the Freud Archives told me he didn't have it, nor was it in the Freud Collection at the University of Essex, where he referred me. The best bet seems to be that it's lying undiscovered within the papers left by Rosenzweig at Washington University in St. Louis. The paper on repression summarily dismissed by Freud is more accessible: it's Rosenzweig and Mason (1934). I have one final issue to comment on, the claim that the theory of evolution is an example of a respected theory without predictive validity. I would say this is a myth or, at least, greatly exaggerated. My understanding is that numerous experiments exist using organisms which reproduce rapidly, such as bacteria, yeast, and perhaps even fruit flies which verify adaptive evolution in the face of imposed environmental conditions. Also, there's a kind of backwards prediction (which sounds like an oxymoron). One of the claims of evolution is that it proceeds in an orderly fashion, more primitive organisms first, then the more advanced. So it's predicted, for example, that human remains will never be found in the same geologic strata as dinosaur bones, Alley Oop notwithstanding. This prediction is tested every time a group of paleontologists goes out on a dig, and it has never been disconfirmed. Finally, I browsed the talkorigin website (at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html) and I see a massive collection of entries, each subdivided into "prediction", "confirmation", and "potential disconfirmation". Looks good to me. Stephen References Bailey, P. (1964). Sigmund Freud: Scientific period (1873-1897). In: Wolpe, J. et al eds. The Conditioning Therapies. Holt Rinehart. Rosenzweig, S. (1992). Freud and experimental psychology: the emergence of idiodynamics. In: Koch, S., & Leary, D. eds. _A Century of Psychology as Science_. APA [version first presented at a conference September 4, 1979]. Rosenzweig, S., & Mason, G. (1934). An experimental study of memory in relation to the theory of repression. British Journal of Psychology, 24, 247-265. ___________________________________________________ Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470 Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661 Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lennoxville, QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Dept web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy TIPS discussion list for psychology teachers at http://faculty.frostburg.edu/psyc/southerly/tips/index.htm _______________________________________________ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
