Wonder : Childhood and the Lifelong Love of Science

How we can all be lifelong wonderers: restoring the sense of joy in discovery we felt as children. From an early age, children pepper adults with questions that ask why and how : Why do balloons float? How do plants grow from seeds? Why do birds have feathers? Young children have a powerful drive to learn about their world, wanting to know not just what something is but also how it got to be that way and how it works. Most adults, on the other hand, have little curiosity about whys and hows; we might unlock a door, for example, or boil an egg, with no idea of what happens to make such a thing possible. How can grown-ups recapture a child’s sense of wonder at the world? In this book, Frank Keil describes the cognitive dispositions that set children on their paths of discovery and explains how we can all become lifelong wonderers. Keil describes recent research on children’s minds that reveals an extraordinary set of emerging abilities that underpin their joy of discovery—their need to learn not just the facts but the underlying causal patterns at the very heart of science. This glorious sense of wonder, however, is stifled, beginning in elementary school. Later, with little interest in causal mechanisms, and motivated by intellectual blind spots, as adults we become vulnerable to misinformation and manipulation—ready to believe things that aren’t true. Of course, the polymaths among us have retained their sense of wonder, and Keil explains the habits of mind and ways of wondering that allow them—and can enable us—to experience the joy of asking why and how . Contents Preface Acknowledgments I. The Cognitive Gifts of Childhood 1. The Puzzle and the Promise The Rise and Fall of Wonder Wonder Ages and Communities of Wonder Beyond the Natural Sciences 2. Early Exploration and Discovery Data Aggregators The Causal Connection Demarcating Domains Interactions between Domains The PHED Cycle—The Puzzling, Hypothesizing, Exploring, and Discovering Cycle Causal Elaboration and Integration beyond Infancy Developing Biological Thought in Preschool and Later Years 3. Working with Others Learning from What Others Do Learning from What Others Say The Division of Cognitive Labor When Others Differ and How to Argue with Them 4. The Mechanistic Mind Characterizing Mechanistic Explanations Children Are Drawn to Mechanisms Sensing Mechanism’s Broader Benefits—The Case of Generalizability Anticipating the Promise of Mechanistic Framing Abstraction from Detailed Mechanisms Fixing, Adapting, Improving, and Healing—Intervening on Mechanisms An Expanding Mechanism Desert? II. The Big Sleep: Weakening Wonder 5. Developmental Disconnects The False Primacy of the Concrete Different Disconnects about What Develops Contemporary Accounts of Knowledge Growth and Conceptual Change Classroom Consequences of Deficit Mirages Appreciating What Children Bring to School 6. Motivational Muddles When Teaching Goes Well When Teaching Goes Well at the National Level Mathematical Tangents Ruinous Rewards Multiple Mindsets and Developmental Destinies III. Disengagement and Its Discontents 7. Seductive Detours Lingering Legacies Coexistence Dilemmas Illusions of Insight and Understanding—Epistemic Errors Polymaths: Wandering Wonderlust? 8. It’s a Wonderless Life Climate Change and Cognition Biology beyond Mechanisms Continued Influence of Early Intuitive Theories and Biases Motivations, Emotions, and Social Cultural Influences When No Mechanism Is Available How Wonder Matters 9. Great Reawakenings Less Tangible but Highly Rewarding Benefits—New “Lenses” Concrete Courses of Action At the Community and School Levels At the National Level Notes Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Index "An explanation of where children's scientific intuitions come from and how they can be nurtured. Intended not just for scholars but science teachers and enthusiasts as well"-- Provided by publisher