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Can Scientific Development and Children's Cognitive Development Be the Same Process?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Stephen M. Downes
Stephen M. Downes*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Utah
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Abstract

In this paper I assess Gopnik and Meltzoff's developmental psychology of science as a contribution to the understanding of scientific development. I focus on two specific aspects of Gopnik and Meltzoff's approach: the relation between their views and recapitulationist views of ontogeny and phylogeny in biology, and their overall conception of cognition as a set of veridical processes. First, I discuss several issues that arise from their appeal to evolutionary biology, focusing specifically on the role of distinctions between ontogeny and phylogeny when appealing to biology for theoretical support. Second, I argue that to presuppose that cognition is veridical or “truth-tropic” can compromise attempts to understand scientific cognition both throughout history and in the present. Finally, I briefly sketch an evolutionary approach to understanding scientific development that contrasts with Gopnik and Meltzoff's.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 66 , Issue 4 , December 1999 , pp. 565 - 578
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Send requests for reprints to the author, University of Utah, Department of Philosophy, 260 Central Campus Drive, Rm. 341, Salt Lake City, UT 84112-9156.

‡

I am grateful for comments on earlier drafts of this paper by Mike Bishop, Loretta Torrago, David Hull, Alison Gopnik, Christine Grammes, Ram Neta, and anonymous referees. My thinking was also helped by the discussion at a mini-conference at Rutgers organized by Steve Stich. The research was funded by the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah.

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