Chapter 3: The Quantity/Quality Interchange: A Blind Spot on the Highway of Science

Science has but one subject and only one fundamental method. Its subject matter is the array of interconnected and interacting systems we fi nd in the universe around us, including, of course, the various social, psychological, and biological systems of primary concern to psychologists. Science’s fundamental method is that of critical inquiry, whereby hypotheses about the structure and ways or working of systems are subjected to scrutiny relative to the observations we make and logic, as we understand it. While science has but one fundamental method, realization of that method takes any one of indefinitely many different forms in the potentially infinite array of contexts of investigation. In particular, in subjecting hypotheses to critical scrutiny, various methods of observation are employed, such methods being tailored to both the substantive and formal character of the attributes under investigation.