PSYCH 2B03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Litmus, Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman
8 Sep 2017
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Document Summary
Personality vs. other fields: more global and general, long history of interest, ~ 3000 years, many large-scale theories, theories don"t guide research, theories generated/tested differently. Influenced by theorist"s personality: theorists clinicians, not scientists, little empirical support, non-scientific evaluation, theories difficult to test, postdictive, not predictive, vague, abstract concepts. Why these theories: historic role in personality theory development; influential in the past, currently important, nicely illustrate a particular perspective. Hypothetical constructs: an idea that we make up to explain what does not exist, extremely useful to understand observations. Examples of hypothetical constructs: gravity, energy, personality. Hypothetical constructs in theoretical physics: it is important to realize that in physics today we have no knowledge of what energy is. We do not have a picture that energy comes in little blobs of a definite amount. It is not that way. (richard feynman: i don"t demand that a theory correspond to reality because i don"t [know] what [reality] is.
