{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.025380710659898477, 'fraction_numerical': 0.01015228426395939, 'mean_word_length': 5.467213114754099, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Social Psychology as History and as Traditional Science: An Appraisal

Gergen (1973) presented the thesis that social psychology is primarily an historical inquiry. The implications of his paper are very significant for the status of social psychology as a scien tific discipline. In defense of traditional science Schlenker (1974) presented a strong rebuttal, focussing on five major issues; the nature of theoretical abstractness, the search for regularity, open systems, the conditional nature of scientific propositions, and the uniqueness of events. The present paper considers the Gergen- Schlenker debate within the context of these five issues. The analyses indicate that Schlenker's rebuttal arguments are not de finitive, and that Gergen's thesis still awaits a decisive answer.