Theory and Evidence: The Development of Scientific Reasoning [Hardcover]

Barbara Koslowski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1996 | ISBN-10: 0262112094 | ISBN-13: 978-0262112093

In Theory and Evidence Barbara Koslowski brings into sharp focus the ways in which the standard literature both distorts and underestimates the reasoning abilities of ordinary people. She provides the basis for a new research program on a more complete characterization of scientific reasoning, problem solving, and causality. Long acknowledged for her empirical work in the field of cognitive development, Koslowski boldy criticizes many of the currently classic studies and musters a compelling set of arguments, backed by an exhaustive set of experiments carried out during the last decade.

Theory and Evidence describes research that looks at the beliefs that people hold about the type of evidence that counts in scientific reasoning and also examines how those beliefs change with age. The primary focus is on the strategies that underlie actual scientific practice: two general sorts of research are reported, one on hypothesis testing and the other on how people deal with evidence that disconfirms a given explanation—the process of hypothesis revision.

Koslowski argues that when scientific reasoning is operationally defined so that correct performance consists of focusing on covariation and ignoring considerations of theory or mechanisms, then subjects are often treated as engaging in flawed reasoning when in fact their reasoning is scientifically legitimate. Neither relying on covariation alone nor relying on theory alone constitutes a formula for success.

A Bradford Book. Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change series

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The Koslowski book will become a classic on scientific reasoning, problmem solving, and causal understanding. It challenges the model that dominates psychological work on these topics, the human analysis of the psychology of causal thinking. It weaves a beautifully clear treatment of alternative relevant modern philosphical considerations about causal thinking into the presentation of a clever set of experiments. The case is convincing: children and adults do reason in sensible scientific ways in their use of evidence and search for causes. A must for experts in cognitive science, congnitive development, conceptual change and science education."
—Rochel Gelman, Professor of Psychology, UCLA

About the Author

Barbara Koslowski is Associate Professor of Human Development at Cornell University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 360 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (July 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262112094
• ISBN-13: 978-0262112093
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,495,073 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Profound Defense of Humans' Inductive Capacities, June 22, 2000

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psychephile - See all my reviews

This review is from: Theory and Evidence: The Development of Scientific Reasoning (Hardcover)

It seems that two groups of cognitive scientists are moving in opposite directions: straight cognitive psychologists routinely show that adults can't reason themselves out of a bag, whereas developmental cognitive psychologists tell us that we were born scientists. If you think there's something goofy about this, you're right. And, as Barbara Koswolski shows, what's goofy is cognitive psychologists' model of science--i.e., logical positivism, the notion (inter alia) that scientific induction begins by checking our prior knowledge and theories at the lab door.

Following this Victorian notion of science, cognitive psychologists typically test adults' ability to find covariation by presenting them with tasks that--like logical positivism--fail to represent the features that scientists really face. That is, the tasks rule out the use of background knowledge; any causes of the variation to be identified is already known to be present among a clearly defined set of alternatives; all these potential causes are *stipulated* to be equally possible; and any hypotheses made about covariation must be rejected *in toto* rather than modified. In other words, these canned science experiments are about as representative of science as those cheesy tasks you find in "Hands-On Science" museums.

Faced with these tasks, adults ignore whether variables are confounded, refuse to gather information exclusively about covariation, fail to search for disconfirming evidence when testing hypotheses, cling to theories in the face of "disconfirming" evidence, ignore base-rate information, and are swayed by illusory correlations. Based on this portrait of adults, it is a wonder that we've managed to function at all, let alone land on the moon.

But, as Koslowski shows in a series of 16 elegant and ingenious experiments, the problem is not in ourselves but in our tasks. How adults and adolescents reason about covariation is perfectly sensible from a scientific perspective--they earnestly look for causal mechanisms. And by doing so, they don't look like logical positivists in search of Humean indices. That is, they ignore theoretically and causally trivial covariations and confounds, but look out for unexpected causal mechanisms, and they consider whether variation can be equally explained by rival alternative accounts (even for their own pet hypotheses).

To be sure, Koslowski doesn't whitewash adults' wrong-headed causal theories (like the notion that being an extrovert causes people to eschew library science). But she does find great reason for hope in even American adolescents' scientific capacities, and what's more--she delivers a devastating critique of positivism, a ringing endorsement of "theory-laden" science, and a profound defense of real human rationality.

One last bit of praise: Koslowski underscores her thesis stylistically--she treats the reader as if he is rational. She answers questions as they arise, formulates conclusions so they neither say too much nor too little, and always treats the positions of other researchers fairly. With so many popular books in the cognitive sciences these days, I hope that her book reaches an audience that isn't quite so used to these virtues.