On Fri, 20 Feb 2004 heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk wrote:
> Miles on fealty to Freud:
>
> More to the point, Freud the person is being rubbished to rubbish those
> ideas we associate with Freud.
I've pointed out earlier that Carl's ad hominem argument is goofy.
>
> Then Miles says:
>
> "2. Imagine if physicists took the attitude about
> Newton that Kenneth does about Freud above: "People say the
> Newtonian conception of time and space are dead, but Newton
> was brilliant, he was an important physicist, therefore we
> shouldn't replace his concept of time and space with
> new, incompatible ideas (e.g., curvature of spacetime around
> massive bodies)". Today's wisdom is tomorrow's naive
> misunderstanding. If that applies to the Newtonian
> conception of time and space, that surely applies to
> Freud."
> But this is a very bad analogy in all respects. First, it is not
> obvious in which sense Freud has been superseded. Second it is not true
> to say that Newtonian space is redundant. Newton's theories are a good
> account of space in all but the sub-atomic level. Einstein doesn't
> cancel out Newton, he only amends him.
>
Both of your objections to my analogy are dubious. Many of Freud's ideas in psychology have in fact been superceded. For instance, his catharsis theory of aggression is inconsistent with about a hundred well-controlled scientific studies, and contemporary aggression researchers and theorists more or less ignore Freud's theory. Behaviorist therapists use systematic desensitization to effectively treat phobias, even though Freud argued that the treatment of phobias required an examination of the unconscious content that is indirectly expressed via the phobia. Examples like this abound in psychology.
Moreover, your conception of modern Einsteinian spacetime as an "amendment" to Newton is mistaken. Einstein's theories of special and general relativity completely overturn Newton's model of "absolute" time and space. For instance, for Newton, the simultaneity of events is absolute; either they occur at the same time, or they don't. As Einstein points out, simultaneity is defined relative to a particular frame of reference. Second, in a Newtonian universe, gravity is "action at a distance"; according to Einstein, gravity is a product of the geometry of spacetime (massive objects cause curvature in 4-dimensional spacetime, and that accounts for gravitational effects like acceleration and path deflections near massive stars).
Even more fundamental: Newton asserts that time and space exist independently of the objects that occupy time and space: "The idea of the independent existence of space and time can be expressed drastically in this way: If matter were to disappear, space and time alone would remain behind (as a kind of stage for physical happening)" Einstein, Relativity: The special and general theory, p. 144. Einstein contrasts this Newtonian view with his field theory of spacetime: "There is no such thing as an empty space, i.e., a space without field. Space-time does not claim existence on its own, but only as a structural quality of the field" (p. 155). Space and time do not exist independent of/prior to the objects that inhabit it; rather, the configuration of objects produce a certain geometry of spacetime (space and time only exist as aspects of these gravitational fields!).
Given these dramatic differences between the Newtonian universe and the Einsteinian universe, my analogy is apt: scientific progress in physics depended on scientists rejecting the fundamental ideas of earlier physicists. --And just so in psychology.
Miles