Psychology and science 1
Mainstream psychology, since its emergence as a separate scientific discipline (Wundt, 1879), has always claimed to be a science.
The early structuralists tried to bring the scientific methods of pure observation and analysis to the study of human experience, aiming to break consciousness down into its constituent parts, as chemistry had done with the elements
The behaviourists prided themselves on the strictness of their application of the scientific method, being influenced perhaps by Pavlov who, being a physiologist, took extreme care in the control and standardisation of his methods (going so far as to construct a ‘Tower of silence’ with airtight doors and a moat filled with straw to prevent outside distractions to his experiments on conditioning reflexes )
Freud himeslf always maintained that he was a scientist, despite criticism of his methods; and, although the humanists deliberately took a step away from the scientific in the 1960s, the vast majority of current psychology (mostly cognitive) is funded on the basis of its scientific nature.
However, psychology has come under attack as being a pseudo science, pretending to be a science but achieving nothing like the results and success of the natural science.
心理学与科学 I
主流心理学自从成为一门独立的学科（Wundt,1879）以后，就一直宣称是一门科学。
早期的构造主义者试图运用纯理论观察与抽象分析的科学方法来研究人的经验，目的是将意识分解成它的组成部分，就像化学分割元素一样。
行为主义者自豪的是他们对科学方法的严谨的应用，正是受到生理学家巴甫洛夫的影响，他对控制和标准化的方法极为重视（这么做是为了构建一个具有密封门和被稻草填满壕沟的“寂静之塔”，来阻止外界对他的条件反射实验的干扰）。
弗洛伊德始终认为自己是一个科学家，尽管他的方法受到批评；而且，尽管人本主义者从20世纪60年代就刻意与科学保持了距离，绝大多数的当前心理学（主要是认知心理学）是建立在自然科学的基础上。
然而，心理学被作为一门伪科学正在遭受攻击，将自己伪装成一门科学却没有获得任何类似自然科学的结果与成就的东西。
Worse still, it has been dismissed by some as nothing more than common sense. Why might this be? There are several possible reasons:
1 Everybody is a natural psychologist themselves, and the subject matter of psychology (thoughts and behavior) is 更糟的是，它因为并不比常识多更糟糕的是,心理学被一些人认为仅仅是常识而遭到摒弃。为什会这样？有几种可能的原因：
1 每个人自己是一个朴素的心理学家，心理学的研究对象（思想与行为）是免费提供给日常猜测。 freely available to everyday speculation.
However, one thing psychology has demonstrated is that there are many instances when we do not or cannot know the reasons for our behavior (Nisbet and Wilson,1977), but when psychology comes up with its findings, the tendency is for the individual to say (in very ‘ad hoc’ manner), ‘Oh, I knew that all along’.
This is because common sense psychology is full of contradictory proverbs (‘birds of a feather, flock together’ or ‘opposites attract’) but it is the role of psychology as a science to put these to the objective test, to provide evidence to support these view or to decide between them. As a science, psychology has to aim for ‘understanding prediction and control above the levels achieved by unaided commonsense’ (Allport, 1946)
Psychology has come up with many counter-intuitive finding-in his obedience experiment, Milgram took the precaution of asking qualified people to estimate the percentage of subjects who would give a potentially lethal 450 volt shock to another person, just because a psychologist told them to, and found that the actual percentage (65%) was far greater than the highest estimate (3%)
然而，有一点心理学已经证明，有很多情况我们没有或不能知道我们行为的原因（Nisbet and Wilson,1977）,但当谈到心理学提出自己的研究发现时，个人的倾向是在说（“仅此而言”的方式），“哦，我一直知道”。
这是因为常识心理学是相互矛盾的谚语（“鸟的羽毛完整，群聚在一起”或“异性相吸”），但它是心理学作为一门科学的作用，把这些进行客观测试，提供证据来支持这些观点或在他们之间作出决定。作为一门科学，心理学瞄准“理解预测和控制这些独立常识所达到的水平”（Allport,1946）。
心理学已经提出了很多反直觉的发现，在服从实验中，Milgram要求合格人士估计被试谁可能给另外的人一个可能致命的450伏特冲击的百分比，仅仅是因为一个心理学家要求他们这样做，而且他发现实际的比例（65%） 要远远高于最高的估计数（3%）。
2 Psychology is a relatively young science but aims to investigate one of, if not the, most complex subjects in the universe-the human brain’s physical complexity is stunning, and just think of the huge amount of learnt information it contains.
The human subject is the victim of so many variables 、and influences (genetic, neurochemical, environmental) that the idea of controlling out all the possible extraneous variables and isolating just one variable to manipulate, is impossible in practice.
3 Psychology is beset, more so than most other subjects, with many philosophical, practical, and ethical problems.
Philosophically–the notion of consciousness in human raises difficulties in explaining how apparently non-physical thoughts, feelings and experiences can be explained by physical processes (how can my feeling of ‘happiness’ be the same as neurones firing in a particular part of my brain?) and also raises the possibility of freewill (we alone, as humans, have claimed the ability to be able reject or choose amongst all of the influences that affect us). There is also the problem of choosing which level of explanation on the reductionist ladder to use to describe human behavior (the social, psychological, physiological?)
Practically – apart from the above mentioned difficulties in investigating a complex system, there is 2 心理学是一个相对年轻的科学却旨在探讨宇宙中最复杂的被试之一，人类大脑的物理复杂性是惊人的，只要想一想它所包含的大量的信息。
人的主体是如此众多变量的受害者，受这些变量的影响（遗传，神经化学，环境），控制所有可能的外界因素和只孤立一个变量来进行操作的观念，实际上是不可能的。
3 心理学比起许多其他的许多学科，例如，哲学，应用学科，伦理问题等受到更多围攻。
从哲理上说，在解释人的意识观念的产生方面存在困难，也就是怎么解释生理加工过程产生了非物质性的思维、感受和经验（我的感觉“幸福”是怎么和我大脑中一个特定部位的神经元放电是一回事。），同时，在解释自由意志产生的可能性方面也存心困难（我们曾宣称，只有我们人类有能力拒绝或者选择所有能够对我们产生影响的因素）。还有一个问题，选择哪一个水平来描述人的行为（社会，心理，生理？）
就实践而言，调查一个复杂的系统除了提到的以上困难外，还有一个问题就是我们是我们自己的研究对
also the problem that we are our own subject matter. Investigating ourselves proves problematic since we react to being studied, unlike chemicals, and may be unwilling to participate in research for self-esteem, for example, or may react differently in the artificial and controlled conditions of an experiment. Worse still, our results may be 象。
研究我们自己证明也是困难重重，这是由于我们能在被研究时作出反应，虽然不是化学反应，并且我们会由于自尊问题而非自愿参与到研究中，例如，我们在人为的控制实验条件下会做出不一样的反应，更糟的是，我们的结果可能被我们的心理和理论偏见扭曲。 hopelessly distorted by our own psychological and theoretical biases.
Ethically- again since we are our own subject matter, there are moral problems with studying human behavior. We do not have unrestricted access to and control of our subject matter, we cannot deliberately damage or kill human subjects in the name of science, or deprive them of all interaction with an environment to discover what is nature! We have to consider their informed consent, their right to withdraw and their right not to suffer any harmful consequences (although psychologist have not always obeyed these principles).
伦理上，既然我们是自己的研究对象，那么在研究人类行为时就会产生道德问题。我们不能无限制的访问和控制我们的研究对象，我们不能以科学的名义刻意破坏和杀死人类被试，或者剥夺他们与环境的相互作用来发现本质是什么！我们要考虑他们的知情同意，他们撤回的权利和不受到任何有害后果的权利（尽管心理学家并不总是承认这些原则） 。
因篇幅问题不能全部显示，请点此查看更多更全内容