Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: what makes science possible?
- Part one Science and innateness
- Part two Science and cognition
- Part three Science and motivation
- Part four Science and the social
- 15 Scientific cognition as distributed cognition
- 16 The science of childhood
- 17 What do children learn from testimony?
- 18 The baby in the lab-coat: why child development is not an adequate model for understanding the development of science
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
18 - The baby in the lab-coat: why child development is not an adequate model for understanding the development of science
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: what makes science possible?
- Part one Science and innateness
- Part two Science and cognition
- Part three Science and motivation
- Part four Science and the social
- 15 Scientific cognition as distributed cognition
- 16 The science of childhood
- 17 What do children learn from testimony?
- 18 The baby in the lab-coat: why child development is not an adequate model for understanding the development of science
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
Alison Gopnik and her collaborators have recently proposed a novel account of the relationship between scientific cognition and cognitive development in childhood. According to this view, the processes underlying cognitive development in infants and children and the processes underlying scientific cognition are identical. We argue that Gopnik's bold hypothesis is untenable because it, along with much of cognitive science, neglects the many important ways in which human minds are designed to operate within a social environment. This leads to a neglect of norms and the processes of social transmission which have an important effect on scientific cognition and cognition more generally.
Introduction
In two recent books and a number of articles, Alison Gopnik and her collaborators have proposed a bold and intriguing hypothesis about the relationship between scientific cognition and cognitive development in early childhood. In this chapter we will argue that Gopnik's bold hypothesis is untenable. More specifically, we will argue that even if Gopnik and her collaborators are right about cognitive development in early childhood they are wrong about science. The minds of normal adults and of older children are more complex than the minds of young children, as Gopnik portrays them, and some of the mechanisms that play no role in Gopnik's account of cognitive development in early childhood play an essential role in scientific cognition.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cognitive Basis of Science , pp. 335 - 362Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002
- 6
- Cited by