Journal für Psychologie (Dec 2009)
Physical science is to engineering as basic research in psychology is to „psychological plumbing“? An interdisciplinary counter-plea and some following questions concerning contemporary psychology
Abstract
The authors express their opinion on the endeavour of aligning psychology after the model of physics, especially to bring into play the relation of the latter with engineering, in order to propagate a separation of pure basic psychological science and applied disciplines. In the first instance the intention was to describe the real connexions between physics and engineering and hence there is no cause for the separation mentioned. For this very reason it is also possible to state some similarities between these disciplines and psychology. This is true if one considers general systemtheoretical or holistic perspectives from an epistemological view. But whenever the concrete subjects of research are under examination then it is becoming evident that there is no sense in comparisons between psychology and physics (including engineering).
