The Baby in the Lab-Coat: Why Child Development Is Not an Adequate Model for Understanding the Development of Science
| Abstract | Alison Gopnik and her collaborators have recently proposed a bold and intriguing hypothesis about 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. | |||||||||
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Similar books and articlesDaniel Nazer, Aaron Ruby, Shaun Nichols, Jonathan Weinberg, Stephen Stich, Luc Faucher & Ron Mallon (2002). The Baby in the Lab-Coat: Why Child Development is Not an Adequate Model for Understanding the Development of Science. In P. Carruthers, S. Stich & M. Siegal (eds.), The Cognitive Basis of Science. Cambridge University Press.
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