Is Psychology a science or an art subject

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Dear Sir,

I just wanted to know that "is psychology a subject of science or arts" and if any one of them then reasons to why it is included in that category.

i will be very thankful if you please help me out with this problem. Thank you. Yours faithful M.Awais Azam Baig

-- M.Awais Azam Baig (devils_stealth@yahoo.com), August 27, 2002

Answers

Psychology is such a diverse field that it's hard to answer your question. If you visit the web page for the divisions of the American Psychological Association at http://www.apa.org/about/division.html you'll see the range of American psychology. Certainly the research psychologies are science. But some of the applied psychologies such as psychoanalysis are both science and art. It becomes even more complex if you think about the psychology that is implicit in some of the arts, such as the novel--is the psychological awareness of a Dostoevsky science or art? What about the awareness of principles of perception in paintings? Is that science or art? I think you'll find that compelling arguments can be made on both sides, and you might want to approach it as an issue of both/and rather than either/or.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), August 28, 2002.

If you look at university calendars, you'll find that the psychology dept. is sometimes grouped with the Faculty or College of Arts, sometimes with that of (Natural) Science, sometimes it is in both (as it is where I am at York), and sometimes it is put into a Faculty or College of Social or Behavioral Science (as it was at my undergradute school). In short, the crude academic divisions that have come down to us from the Medieval university do not seem to be up to the task of unambiguously classifying a young (and complex!) discipline such as psychology.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), August 28, 2002.

A psychologist should be a scientist as well as a master of arts...

-- Cindy Xiao (yaksa_asura@sina.com), October 11, 2002.

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