Norman Holland at Psychology Today has argued (here) that knowledge cumulates in science but not in the humanities. Holland has claimed that knowledge cumulates in science because it comes to definitive conclusions. Since the humanities don’t come to definitive conclusions and since the humanities are more interested in discussing problems than solving them, the humanities don’t gather together knowledge. In a sense, I think that his argument is that knowledge is not possible in the humanities.
He goes on to argue that psychology is suffering the same fate as the humanities. It too has become more interested in the conversation than in results. He then says that psychology needs to find a way back to the scientific, but he thinks it’ll be hard to do because psychology’s subject matter is the mind.
I wish I could agree with Holland’s assessment of the sciences, but I don’t; rather, I think a case can be made that sciences have been less results-oriented than Holland lets on. Take, for example, medical research on the dangers or benefits of daily doses of caffeine. For every study that concludes caffeine is bad for you and causes cancer there is another study that concludes caffeine is good for your and prevents cancer. I don’t take that to be very conclusive.
Of course one might argue that Holland has not contributed to the advancement of science by publishing his article; instead, he’s merely advanced the conversation. There are no definitive conclusions in his article. He ends with the following vague statement: “I’d be very curious to read what some of you out there think. I’m just plain puzzled.” His own conceptual confusion is a testament to his lacking any results or data supporting his argument. So, I think, by his own lights, he should have refrained from publishing the article.
