Integrity or Unity?

Abstract

No doubt there will be many readers sympathetic to the thesis that psychology is fragmented (presumably in a way that other sciences are not). Many others are probably quite skeptical of any and all attempts directed explicitly toward ameliorating this state of affairs Perhaps there are those who will view the pursuit of unification by several contributors to this volume as offensive to their scholarly sensibilities. Nevertheless, the plurality of domains of psychological inquiry and the confinement of its practitioners should be an embarrassment to those who adhere, as various of our contributors do, to the ideal of a unity of science. For those who acknowledge the “theory-ladenness” of facts, fragmentation is not so much an embarrassment as it is a dilemma, the horns of which are skepticism or a retreat into commitment. The latter is evident in the various schools of psychology, whereas the former is most often cloaked as conventionalism. The quest for unification within any of these perspectives is unlikely to gain consensus. What is at stake here are questions about the nature of confirmation, truth, and rationality which are perhaps more nearly related to whole world views than the particulars of scientific practice. In any case, although the issues appear to be both global and subtle, they surely have some affinity with what Gerald Holton has recently (American Scientist 1986, 74, 237–243) referred to as the integrity of science.