Words, Thoughts, and Theories

1. The Other Socratic Method

• The child treats the adult language as another source of information about the structure of the world, along with her own experience. While the child is inferring the structure of the outside world, she is also untangling the structure of language itself, and she may use solutions in one area as clues to solutions in the other.
• Ultimately, our motivation for watching and talking to children is the same as Socrates'. The most central questions in cognitive science are questions that only they can answer.

I: The Theory Theory

2. The Scientist as Child

• Science is cognitive almost by definition, insofar as cognition is about how minds arrive at veridical conceptions of the world.
• A cognitive view of science might provide a useful middle ground, even a bridge, between logical and sociological views of science.
• Quite typically, underlying any human cognitive activity is an abstract structure that is not at all apparent in superficial phenomenology or practice.
• From an evolutionary point of view, three of the most distinctive features of human beings are their long, protected immaturity, the plasticity of their behavior, and their ability to adapt to an extremely wide variety of environments. Equipping human children with particularly powerful and flexible cognitive devices might be an important part of this picture. Indeed, we might think of childhood as a period when many of the requirements for survival are suspended so that children can concentrate on acquiring a veridical picture of the particular physical and social world in which they find themselves.