The Cognitive Basis of Science

The Cognitive Basis of Science concerns the question 'What makes science possible?' Specifically, what features of the human mind and of human culture and cognitive development permit and facilitate the conduct of science? The essays in this volume address these questions, which are inherently interdisciplinary, requiring co-operation between philosophers, psychologists, and others in the social and cognitive sciences. They concern the cognitive, social, and motivational underpinnings of scientific reasoning in children and lay persons as well as in professional scientists. The editors' introduction lays out the background to the debates, and the volume includes a consolidated bibliography that will be a valuable reference resource for all those interested in this area. The volume will be of great importance to all researchers and students interested in the philosophy or psychology of scientific reasoning, as well as those, more generally, who are interested in the nature of the human mind.

1. Introduction: what makes science possible? Peter Carruthers, Stephen Stich and Michael Siegal; Part I. Science and Innateness: 2. Human evolution and the cognitive basis of science Steven Mithen; 3. Modular and cultural factors in biological understanding: an experimental approach to the cognitive basis of science Scott Atran; 4. The roots of scientific reasoning: infancy, modularity, and the art of tracking Peter Carruthers; Part II. Science and Cognition: 5. Science without grammar: scientific reasoning in severe a-grammatic aphasia Rosemary Varley; 6. Causal maps and Bayes nets: a cognitive and computational account of theory-formation Alison Gopnik and Clark Glymour; 7. The cognitive basis of model based reasoning in science Nancy Nersessian; 8. Understanding the role of cognition in science: the Science as Category framework Kevin Dunbar; 9. Theorizing is important, and collateral information constrains how well it is done Barbara Koslowski and Stephanie Thompson; 10. The influence of prior belief on scientific thinking Jonathan St B. T. Evans; 11. Thinking about causality: pragmatic, social and scientific rationality Denis Hilton; Part III. Science and Motivation: 12. The passionate scientist: emotion in scientific cognition Paul Thagard; 13. Emotions and epistemic evaluations Christopher Hookway; 14. Social psychology and the theory of science Philip Kitcher; Part IV. Science and the Social: 15. Scientific cognition as distributed cognition Ronald Giere; 16. The science of childhood Michael Siegal; 17. What do children learn from testimony? Paul Harris; 18. The baby in the lab-coat: why child development is an inadequate model for understanding the development of science Luc Faucher, Ron Mallon, Daniel Nazer, Shaun Nichols, Aaron Ruby, Stephen Stich and Jonathan Weinberg.

The Cognitive Basis of Science concerns the question: what makes science possible? Specifically, what features of the human mind and of human permit and facilitate the conduct of science? The essays in this volume address these questions, which are inherently interdisciplinary.

Peter Carruthers is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Maryland College Park. He was until recently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, where he founded and directed the Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies. He is the author of Language, Thought and Consciousness (Cambridge, 1996), Phenomenal Consciousness: A Naturalistic Theory (Cambridge, 2000), and (with George Botterill) of The Philosophy of Psychology (Cambridge, 1999). He co-edited the previous three Hang Seng Centre volumes, Theories of Theories of Mind (Cambridge, 1996), Language and Thought (Cambridge, 1998) and Evolution and the Human Mind (Cambridge, 2000).
Michael Siegal is Professor of Psychology at the University of Sheffield. He has researched and taught internationally and has published extensively in the area of developmental psychology. Siegal is the author of Knowing Children: Experiments in Conversation and Cognition, 2nd edition (1997) and co-editor with Candida C. Peterson of Children's Understanding of Biology and Health (Cambridge, 1999). He has served on the editorial boards of Child Development, Developmental Science, and Developmental Psychology, and is an Associate Editor of the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.
Stephen Stich is Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University. He previously taught at the University of Michigan, the University of Maryland and the University of California, San Diego and has held visiting appointments at the University of Sydney, the Australian National University, the City University of New York, the University of Canterbury (New Zealand) and the University of Otago (New Zealand). He is a past President of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology. Stich is the author of From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science (1983), The Fragmentation of Reason (1990), and Deconstructing the Mind (1996), and has published over a hundred papers in professional journals. He is also the editor or co-editor of six volumes, edits the Oxford University Press Evolution and Cognition Series, and is Director of the Rutgers University Research Group on Evolution and Cognition.