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Science as Child's Play: Tales from the Crib

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Arthur Fine
Arthur Fine*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Northwestern University
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Extract

Child's play? Certainly Alison Gopnik is in good company in pointing to connections between science and child development. To mention just a few luminaries: in psychology, Freud (followed by Erikson and Piaget) looked at the developmental connection between children's play and adult work; in philosophy, Thomas Reid may have been the first to ground the faculty of reasoning in developmental stages that “unfold themselves by degrees; so that it [the child] is inspired with the various principles of common sense” (1764, V, 7). As for connecting commonsense reasoning and science, according to Einstein, “The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking” (1954, 290). Quod erat demonstrandum.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 63 , Issue 4 , December 1996 , pp. 534 - 537
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1996

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Footnotes

†

Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, Northwestern University, Evanston, II.

References

Einstein, A. (1954), Ideas and Opinions. New York: Crown Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Fine, A. (1986), The Shaky Game, 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Reid, T. (1764), An Inquiry into the Human Mind. Edinburgh: J. Bell.Google Scholar