Psychology is a relatively modern therefore an extremely flexible science, which does not yet provide systematic knowledge or evidence base for each doctrinal assertion. Controversial discoveries and ideas coming from scientists with opposing views on research and psychology itself make it crucial to consider every possible theory. Development of psychology demands individual approach to research in most cases, making its structuration or unification impossible. In addition, studying the origins of human psychology may be the key to its deeper understanding and a possibility to transform it into a more systematic form.
Psychologists should consider the revolutionary paradigm shift provided by evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology appears to be rational and able to explain some mismatches in human behavior. For example, even though thousands of people are killed with guns annually, humans tend to fear harmless spiders or snakes much more. Such mismatch may be explained by psychology not being able to adapt to new environment during its extended process of evolution. Therefore deeper development of evolutionary psychology may be able shed light on many contradictory psychological manifestations.
Psychologists should not be limited by structure in their research as the phenomena they study are multileveled, and require both rationalist and relativist point of view. The reason behind that is that there are two main approaches in psychology, both of which have significant contribution to science (Driver-Linn, 2003). In some cases knowledge is required to be objective and systematic. However, in other instances knowledge may not be needed to be objective or proven to be true to have practical value. Accordingly, high standards in formalization may cause serious slowdown in research process or even bring it to a complete stop.
Psychology may not be able to become unified in the nearest future, even though that may be a laudable goal. Enormous variety of methods and scientific approaches in research of psychology makes unification relatively impossible and even impractical (Green, 2015). Psychology is changing rapidly, introducing new research and knowledge, while refusing or disputing outdated tenets. Therefore it is impossible to unify knowledge related to such malleable science.
References
Driver-Linn, E. (2003). Where is psychology going? Structural fault lines revealed by psychologists’ use of Kuhn. American psychologist, 58(4), 269–278. Web.
Green, C. D. (2015). Why psychology isn’t unified, and probably never will be. Review of general psychology, 19(3), 207–214. Web.