behavior, a process that develops understanding.
Experimental scientists study a variety of behaviors (Chaplin, 1994, p. 472). Modern science is the study of natural phenomena through the application of experimental methods. The three principal divisions in scientific inquiry are the physical, the biological, and the social. The physical sciences include physics, chemistry, and geology, while the biological sciences include zoology, botany, and physiology, and the social sciences include economics, political science, social anthropology, sociology, and psychology.
The Influence of Experimental Science
As a unique area of scientific inquiry, psychology dates only to the late-nineteenth century (Landy, 1992, p. 15). It was in the late-nineteenth century that medical scientists began to gather their data through the observation of people. Prior to the introduction of this scientific approach, psychology was hardly discernible from philosophy. Through the application of the process of scientific experimentation, psychology was transformed into the study of human and animal behavior and mental processes.
The application of the scientific method, thus, became indispensable in the conduct of psychological experiments (McGuigan, 1990, pp. 11-12). The scientific method introduced into the study of psychology following the rise of experimental science in the nineteenth century contributed to the validation of psychology as a science. Perceptions of the value of psychology are derived from the scientific validation of the discipline.
Knowledge may be viewed as existing in either a static or a dynamic state (Kuhn, 1970, pp. 10-34; Conant, 1951, pp. 24-25 ). The static view perceives knowledge as a body of systematized information that includes connected principles, theories, and laws (Crooks & Stein, 1988, p. 22). In this view, knowledge is the cumulative result of past investigations, to which contemporary scholars add ...