Quote Originally Posted by Singu View Post
That sounds more like phenetics, which is a classification of organisms based on observable similarities. Which is also pretty much what Socionics is.
I think Socionics's model goes beyond that... the problem is it's far outdated nowadays. While socionists in Russia or wherever just never moved on & never tried to use the theory in the scientific way.

And that's why I said I think your problem is more that.

Like, why do you get hung up on it even. Something about how it's being used is what seems to bother you.

And I will give it to you - the model is too easily interpreted in a way that makes scientific investigation of it impossible.

It actually is possible though. But I see no point to doing so, since I believe science moved way past Socionics by now in recent years especially.

And even though yeah psychology research could do with more of a focus on individual differences and both interpersonal and intrapersonal dynamics between those, theories in applied psychology areas do deal with this somewhat, just not in a "neat" way like Socionics attempted to do it. Which is understandable, i.e. that it's not in a neat way, because it is actually very hard to do it that way since we lack some of the understanding for that still.

Socionics tried to provide some of that but it eventually doesn't hold up.


A phylogenetic tree is not necessarily based on observations, since it requires an interpretation of what the DNA means. Which is a theory, not an observation.
But the theories on DNA also had to come from observation. ... : P

Maybe not as direct as just see things in front of you with your two eyes right away but it's still observation, not just something out of thin air.


I think you have the cart before the horse. We make categories because we have explanations of some kind (which may only exist in our heads) in order to categorize them in a certain way.
Happen to agree with this


The point is that you couldn't possibly have come up with Darwin's theory of evolution by just categorizing similarities. No amount of categorizing would have come up with that.
Who the fuck tries to do just that for a theory?


It required a completely new way of thinking that things gradually evolved into something different, as in, there are similarities, even though there are no immediate similarities between them. You'd have to take a guess and imagine how things were in the way back before time. This required a bold guess to make that giant leap.
Well okay bold guesses....often don't survive scientific scrutiny. Sometimes it helps science move forward sure, but science is not really bold guessing lol.

And I don't think it was just imagination anyway lol in the case of creating evolution theory


It couldn't have been done with an observation, but it could be done with a theory. This is why Darwin made a guess, and not just recognize some patterns or categorize a bunch of organisms.
Uh... while I said that yeah, I happen to agree that categories are determined by the explanation or system, for me it works like, while working out the system, I do notice categories and patterns and whatever. It is hard to say which is the chicken and which is the egg in creating the explanation. In coming to the insight to create it. You could say it's creation of hypotheses from the noticing of patterns that suggest categories etc. But when the explanation is created it definitely determines the categories in a strict way.

It's like in maths too... you can find the solution to the problem in any way you want to, the important thing is that you are able to prove it concretely too.