Psychology as an exact science

Two quotes from textbooks of psychology

In his Text-book of psychology: briefer course published by Holt in New York in 1892 William James wrote:

"A string of raw facts; a little gossip and wrangle about opinions; a little classification and generalization on the mere descriptive level; a strong prejudice that we have states of mind, and that our brain conditions them: but not a single law in the sense that physics shows us laws, not a single proposition from which any consequence can causally be deduced. We don't even know the terms between which the elementary laws would obtain if we had them. This is no science, it is only the hope of science."

Four decades later the situation had not much improved, as can be seen by the words of E. G. Boring from his work The physical dimensions of consciousness published by Appleton-Century in New York in 1933:

"We all know how successful the physical sciences have been and we can also see that biology has prospered in abandoning a vitalism and identifying itself with the physical side of the Cartesian dichotomy. If Descartes was right, if there are these two worlds, then the success of science in attacking the one forms a challenge for the creation of a science of the other. ... Yet, if psychology is coordinate with physics and if the scientific method is applicable to both, then it seems strange that psychology has come such a little way when physics has ramified into many fields and has come so far."

Reference

quoted from Spence, K. W. (1956) Behaviour Theory and Conditioning. Yale University Press, New Haven.

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