Even though the exact movement of the pigeons can't be calculated, you can extract patterns. They go towards food, they nest in cliffs and buildings, they sleep

Even though the exact movement of the pigeons can't be calculated, you can extract patterns. They go towards food, they nest in cliffs and buildings, they sleep at night. You can make very strong predictions about that stuff. Like fluid mechanics. It may actually be impossible to analytically predict the motion of individual particles in a fluid. Numerically it is certainly difficult. Yet we've extracted patterns to the point that we can design jet engines, wings, we can quantify the change in fuel economy from changing the shape of a car headlight... In an ideal world, psychology limits itself to attempting to look at these broad patterns and does so in a rigorous, reproducible way.