CAPTURING THE UNIQUE NATURE OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES: THE SECOND DEMARCATION PROBLEM.

As Meehl (1978) noted four decades ago, psychology has progressed at a significantly slower rate than the natural sciences. This paper argues that one factor that may account for this discrepancy in problem solving progress is that the scientific methods used by psychologists have not properly taken into account unique characteristics of humans that the natural sciences need not consider. This issue has been called "the second demarcation problem" i.e., that a distinction between the methods of the natural sciences (the Naturwissenshaften) and the human sciences (the Geisteswissenshaften) -- needs to be made in order to properly understand the research methods that are necessary for scientific progress in each. This paper describes four such unique characteristics of humans as justification for this second demarcation: 1) radical idiography, 2) phenomenological experience, 3) the possibility of free will, and 4) radically new knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]