Abstract
Poe and Mytik, "From Scientific Method to Methodological Naturalism: The Evolution of an Idea," PSCF 59, no. 3 (2007): 213-8, present a number of popular but erroneous notions. The first is that "science is only qualified to describe what we can learn through sensory observation" (p. 214). Were this true, any effort to understand social or personal phenomena by surveys must be nonscientific. Even granting that questionnaires involve subjective responses which must be handled statistically, excluding the study of persons and their institutions from science seems arbitrary and futile. The studies are empirical, as objective as possible given the entities studied. If they are not scientific, in what category do we put clinical psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology and related studies?