The mid-19th century mechanistic model in physics of how to be scientific was adopted by pioneer psychologists without weighing how generally it fitted their phenomena. It continues as the conventional psychological paradigm in the United States and many other countries. An integrated, indigenous alternative begins to emerge from the partial, sporadic, often implicit frames of reference of such individuals as William James and "schools" like Gestalt. This paper makes manifest the contrasting presuppositions of the conventional (connectionist) and the dissident (emergent) paradigms, examines the practical difference a paradigm makes in conducting the science of psychology, and surmises that a different set of psychological concerns may produce its own culture-specific paradigm, e.g., in the Orient.