Manfred Velden Book order

Since its inception as a field of science in the 19th century, psychology as it is now offered at universities has made great efforts to become a quantitative discipline on par with the natural sciences. Using a variety of different examples, Manfred Velden shows that this is all just a charade where scientific methods are employed without delivering any correspondingly reliable results. The impact of this kind of science has sometimes been downright disastrous; for example, in connection with immigration, forced sterilization, university admissions or the debate on racial differences.

It is a matter of scientific debate to what extent intelligence is hereditary. However, in a relatively broad part of the public the opinion prevails that intelligence is to a large extent hereditary, which means that it can only be minimally improved through social intervention. The book presents the scientific methods for determining heritability in the individual. It is clear from these methods that there can be no general value for heritability of intelligence, and that a heritability value says practically nothing as to the extent to which intelligence can be altered. The volume traces the history of research on the heritability of intelligence. The discipline is manifestly plagued by dubious practices and has caused social damage on a large scale, for example in the context of eugenics, immigration or education policy.

“Evolutionary Psychology”, an offspring of Sociobiology, claims to explain human mental (psychological) functions on the basis of evolution theory. Researchers in the field try to monopolize Darwin for their purpose by calling themselves “Darwinists” or by putting his portrait on the cover of their books. It is shown that Darwin, who actually tried to explain some human behavior, like altruistic behavior, in the context of evolution theory, found the “intellectual and moral faculties” to be predominantly shaped by sociocultural, not biological factors, however. It is also shown that the tendency to reduce mental functions to biological ones, biologism, affects many fields of inquiry to their detriment, such as education, criminology, psychiatry, or philology. Biologism’s dehumanizing effect on our view of the human condition is the dominant topic of the book.

Biologism describes the idea that the science of biology supplies the means to exhaustively explain psychological processes. It has become vastly popular in recent decades. Manfred Velden shows that this idea is illusory on fundamental and a priori grounds. Several fields of inquiry are described, where the biologistic project has demonstrably failed, like, for example, heritability estimates for mental traits like intelligence. It is argued as well that biologism is just a further instance of an older, more comprehensive and equally illusory concept: psychology as a natural science (a science that produces generally accepted basic facts, for example the creation of a psychological risk factor for coronary disease). It is shown that psychology, masquerading as a natural science, as it largely does, may create serious societal problems like, for example, its misuse for racist purposes. The peculiar use of methodology in psychology is also documented.