Is Cognitive Development Equivalent to Scientific Development?

Abstract One of Jean Piaget’s strongest motivations, if not the strongest, for studying intellectual development in children was to get a better grasp of scientific reasoning (see, for example, Piaget, 1970, p. 1). In their book Words, Thoughts, and Theories (1997) Alison Gopnik and Andrew N. Meltzoff take the opposite approach and argue that scientific reasoning provides a model that helps us understand infants’ and young children’s reasoning and cognitive development. According to these authors, the child is not only actively and intelligently exploring its world, as Piaget claimed, but is thinking and acting just like a scientist. The child, like the scientist, creates, tests, and revises theories. In fact, the child in this respect surpasses the normal adult, who is portrayed as a much duller creature.