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Is Psychology A Science

What Is Science?
In order to consider whether psychology is a science, we must first define our terms.
Science's goal is to create reasonable explanations (theories) to describe reality – theories that rely, not on feelings or passions, but on evidence. A scientific theory reflects reality to the best of our ability.
Scientific theories are always theories, they never become the final and only explanation for a given phenomenon.
About scientific evidence, philosopher John Stuart Mill said, “No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.” This saying aptly summarizes the difference between scientific evidence and every other kind of evidence, and it dramatizes the difference between science and ordinary human thinking.
Apart from being filtered through all possible explanations, scientific theories have another important property – they must make predictions that can be tested and possibly falsified. In fact, and this may surprise you, scientific theories can only be falsified, they can never be proven true once and for all. That is why they are called “theories,” as certain as some of them are – it is always possible they may be replaced by better theories, ones that explain more, or are simpler, or that make more accurate predictions than their forebears.
What Is Psychology?
Psychology has as its aim the understanding of human behavior, and as a secondary goal, the treatment of behaviors deemed abnormal. Almost immediately upon the formation of the field, efforts were made to place psychological studies on a scientific basis. Early psychological studies were conducted by Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig, Germany. One of his students, G. Stanley Hall, then went on to establish the first American psychological laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.
Then, in 1900, Sigmund Freud introduced psychoanalytical theory in his...