Staking our claim for qualitative psychology as science

Abstract

A science includes both a system of concepts for the classification of phenomena and a set of rules for constructing models of unobservable process by which the phenomena are generated. The phenomena of the human sciences are meaningful and of the natural sciences, meaningless. Correspondingly, there are discursive modes of representation and complementary material representations. Eschewing quantitative representations excludes material phenomena from psychology. This does not mean that all mathematical forms of representation should be excluded: arithmetic is little use; algebra marginal but geometrical/structural mathematics is of value. However, grammar (in Wittgenstein's sense) is another disciplinary matrix for representing forms of order. A link with neuroscience can be made by using qualitative methods to identify tasks and neuroscience methods of understanding the brain as a tool.

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