Psychology: Natural science

Abstract

Based on some questions proposed by the editor of this monograph, a proposal for the definition and structuring of psychology as a natural science is made. For this, a distinction is made between descriptive sciences, explanatory sciences and technological sciences. Focused on the explanatory sciences and taking sport as an exemplary field of study, psychology is defined as a basic functional science, together with the other natural sciences, when they study man as a natural being. Given the object or formal cause, four sciences are distinguished and considered simultaneously in the study of human beings: physics, biology, psychology and sociology. The object or formal cause for psychology is the association, understood as a relationship built between organic reactions. Taking the four Aristotelian causes —formal cause, material cause, final cause and efficient cause— together with the most current field theoretical model, a general taxonomic proposal is made to organize functional or explanatory psychological knowledge. In order to deal with the specific issues raised, we make an explicit reference to the phenomena of human conditioning, perception and understanding, and to the functional levels and dimensions that can occur, together with the factors of the psychic functional field, as causes of the quantitative variation and its concrete determinants as efficient causes.