Los límites de la racionalidad científica frente al fenómeno de la espiritualidad: una revisión epistemológica de los reduccionismos metodológicos en la investigación psicoclínica

Abstract

The article offers an exploratory analysis regarding the limits and obstacles presented by methodological reductionisms in psycho-clinical research regarding spirituality. Methodological reductionism means the process of simplification and operability required by the same experimental design adopted in psycho-clinical research. The work is limited to pointing out an absurdity that follows from the same implementation of certain methodological cuts: that is, that methodological design that should guarantee the rational approach to spiritual and religious phenomena often operates as a facilitator of erroneous and incomplete understandings of the phenomenon. In this sense, perhaps we can rethink these designs of psycho-clinical research by incorporating or assisting in their theoretical formulations the cognitive baggage of theological and spiritual traditions –elements and principles apparently unrelated to scientific rationality–. Since they can mean a possible way for scientific demonstrations of mental health to acquire greater explanatory power.

The article offers an exploratory analysis regarding the limits and obstacles presented by methodological reductionisms in psycho-clinical research regarding spirituality. Methodological reductionism means the process of simplification and operability required by the same experimental design adopted in psycho-clinical research. The work is limited to pointing out an absurdity that follows from the same implementation of certain methodological cuts: that is, that methodological design that should guarantee the rational approach to spiritual and religious phenomena often operates as a facilitator of erroneous and incomplete understandings of the phenomenon. In this sense, perhaps we can rethink these designs of psycho-clinical research by incorporating or assisting in their theoretical formulations the cognitive baggage of theological and spiritual traditions –elements and principles apparently unrelated to scientific rationality–. Since they can mean a possible way for scientific demonstrations of mental health to acquire greater explanatory power.