Search Results

This chapter considers a type of knowledge structure that is different in many ways from mathematical representations: intuitive theories. It begins with an analysis of local incommensurability from the historical and philosophical literatures. It gives a sense of what incommensurability is, drawing on historical examples. The historical differentiation of the concepts heat and temperature from an earlier undifferentiated concept degree of heat provides a worked example of a conceptual change and lays the groundwork for what evidence is required to establish episodes of conceptual change in childhood. The rest of the chapter works through a parallel case of conceptual change in childhood: the construction of a theory of matter in which the concept material is differentiated from physically real, and the concept weight from density.

This chapter argues that Quinian bootstrapping underlies conceptual change, illustrating with examples drawn from conceptual change in the history of science as well as from conceptual change in childhood. It begins by discussing three accounts of the processes involved in theory construction that have wide currency: (1) historically, CS2 is socially constructed, and each child's individual construction is also a social process; (2) the transition between CS1 and CS2 is achieved via noting contradictions and inconsistencies within CS1 itself or as it applies to the world; and (3) domain-general cognitive development yields resources the child can draw upon for the purpose of theory construction. It argues that each of these proposals fails to fully engage the problem. The chapter shows how each falls short of the account wanted here, and then turns to a positive proposal.

This chapter summarizes the main points from the preceding chapters. It provides an overview of the argument and a road map through it. It argues that distinguishing theory changes that involve conceptual change from those that do not is as central to understanding individual conceptual development as it is to understanding theory acquisition in historical time. Conceptual change constitutes a form of genuine developmental discontinuity and thus poses a very difficult explanatory challenge. Quine's bootstrapping plays a role in the acquisition of both intuitive theories during childhood and explicit theories during the history of science.

The Conclusion summarizes the book's main arguments. This book has argued that, conceptual change is an essential component of scientific progress but what is known about the psychology of concepts needs to be organized in a coherent framework. The Conclusion contends that current theories fail to explain all the known phenomena. The book has sketched a framework for developing multi-process theories of the higher cognitive competences, identifying several key questions that need to be answered by proponents of these theories.

Conceptual change in the domain of evolution requires two simultaneous changes: changes in students’ theoretical conceptions (i.e., developing a proper understanding of evolutionary models) and changes in students’ epistemic practices (i.e., learning the inquiry practices scientists use to develop, revise, and evaluate explanatory models). Model-based inquiry instruction is a promising method for achieving these dual goals. The chapter describes a general approach to model-based inquiry which has been developed; this approach incorporates a variety of scaffolds to support growth in both content understanding and the epistemic practices of science. It also reviews research on evolution instruction and discuss several promising evolution curricula that employ model-based inquiry. Finally, the chapter makes suggestions for new instructional methods based on the review.

This chapter summarizes studies (up to 2009) on approaches to teaching evolution that provide evidence of effectiveness for teaching about evolution. Few studies exist at the elementary and middle school levels. At high school and undergraduate levels, a wide variety of results were reported. The lack of standard assessments and the variation in quality of assessments used limits comparisons among studies. Additionally, evolution education would benefit from more studies with rigorous experimental designs. With these limitations in mind, the review showed no support for lecture-based approaches, whereas inquiry-based and conceptual change approaches showed some evidence for support, especially when an appropriate amount of time was allotted. More research on the effect of making evolution relevant remains to be completed.

Scientists frequently attribute public misunderstanding of evolution to religious or political influences. Ineffective undergraduate teaching has also contributed. Faculty often ignored strong pedagogical evidence. Five research conclusions are discussed: The traditional lecture approach is inadequate. Active learning is much more effective. Fundamental reasoning difficulties limit students’ understanding. Simple steps help overcome these. Misconceptions typically persist unless directly addressed with a conceptual-change approach. Evolution is a complex set of ideas that cannot be adequately understood without advanced critical thinking. This is infrequently mastered without intentionally designed learning tasks. Understanding evolution is typically insufficient for its acceptance. But acceptance as valid for real-world decisions is important. This requires helping students consider social and affective factors related to evolution.

Evolution education has been hampered by two conditions. The first is the perception that there is no need to understand anything beyond the short-term processes of evolution (microevolution) to be a functional citizen. The second is the overwhelming focus on microevolution in the biology curriculum — if evolution is taught, typically only microevolution is addressed. This chapter begins our chapter by building a case for the importance of student understanding of both micro- and macroevolution. Following this discussion, the chapter offers a description of a course designed using the findings of a wide body of research (cognitive science, nature of science, evolution education) that employs an intentional conceptual change approach to the learning of both micro and macroevolutionary concepts.

Induction proceeds from the certain to the uncertain, or so it is commonplace to say. On the contrary, induction is inference from uncertain evidence to uncertain conclusions. This conception of induction is articulated in this chapter. Philosophers have argued that the acceptance of statements in science and other epistemically virtuous enterprises should not be explicated as inductive inference from evidence to hypothesis. It would be misleading to construe the acceptance of theories based on inductive inference from observational evidence to theoretical conclusions. These and other contentions suggest the most fundamental reason philosophers have for rejecting the model of scientific acceptance based on inductive inference: that rejection and acceptance is influenced by conceptual change, by radical shifts in the way people conceive of the world rather than being based simply upon inference from evidence to hypothesis.

Semantic pointers provide new insights into learning by specifying what kinds of representations need to be developed in the brains of learners who are acquiring complex information. Some of this information is verbal, but learners need to be able to integrate this verbal information with other modalities such as pictures and sounds. A social cognitive-emotional workup of the vaccine debate shows how people can learn why vaccines are valuable for public health and the protection of children. Teaching people about vaccines requires communication of many kinds of mental representation: concepts, values, images, beliefs, rules, analogies, and emotions. Educating people about vaccines needs to take into account the complexity of the emotions and the inferences required. Teaching requires many different kinds of conceptual change.

If children's development is not necessarily restricted by conceptual limitations or a one-sidedness of their understanding in the manner proposed by Piaget, and they do have knowledge of the distinction between appearance and reality, there is the challenge of discovering what children know. This chapter suggests that an alternative account is needed for young children's lack of success in their responses to interviewers' questions on tests of their understanding. The model proposed here is that children frequently can succeed if these tests are formulated in a ‘child-friendly’ language, within contexts which provide the experience and support to facilitate their correct answers. The discussion describes recent and new evidence for a core understanding in various areas of knowledge, and the nature of the conceptual change that their understanding might undergo in the process of their development.

This final chapter reviews some of the key claims of the book and considers their significance for the interpretation and epistemology of pure mathematics. Building on some of the points from chapter 13, Pincock argues that a more sustained investigation of the history of the development of mathematics is needed to pin down an appropriate interpretation and epistemology. He presents some considerations in favour of structuralism about pure mathematics, but grants that these are not conclusive. Finally, Pincock returns to the point that the a priori justification of some mathematics is a crucial part of the story of how mathematics can contribute so much to the success of science.

This chapter notes that it is apparent that neo-liberalism constitutes a complex set of thought practices. These thought practices can be analysed in three interconnected ways. First, they can be analysed through processes of conceptual change and adjustment within the internal structure of neo-liberalism. Second, they can be analysed through the historical context that shapes and sustains meaningful ideological expressions. Third, they can be analysed through the ideational boundaries of neoliberalism's core concepts. The book aims to determine the contours of this liberal movement, which has popularly become known in academic and policy debates as neo-liberalism. Its principal objective is to uncover the distinct elements of neo-liberalism in the national contexts of Germany, Britain, and the United States during the second half of the twentieth century, through contextual and conceptual analysis.

This chapter considers what options remain once libertarianism is found wanting as a theory of free will. The chapter argues that responsibility nihilism, or a view that holds that there is no moral responsibility, is unwarranted. There is at least one other option: revisionism. The key idea is that the requirements of moral responsibility might be other than we sometimes conceive of them, and in particular, that it might conflict with aspects of ordinary thinking about moral responsibility. The chapter argues that this is a plausible view under a wide range of understandings of how concepts and language operate, and that responsibility nihilism is not warranted until revisionism can be shown to be unworkable.

This chapter describes two cases of conceptual change in childhood in which domain-general executive function (EF) mechanisms—working memory, set-shifting, and inhibition—predict performance. Is it just that stronger EFs allow children to better express their knowledge, or do EFs actually underlie the learning mechanisms involved in theory change (e.g., hypothesis generation and testing, comprehension monitoring, mental modeling, analogical reasoning)? This chapter presents findings from two studies that test the hypothesis that the learning mechanisms implicated in conceptual change draw on executive functions. The first study investigated the acquisition of a vitalist theory of biology; the second explored children’s reasoning about the physical world. Results of both studies suggest that executive functions underlie children’s ability not only to express the knowledge they already have but to construct new theoretical understanding as well.

Natural phenomena, such as illness or adaptation, can be explained in many ways. Typically, this many-to-one mapping between explanations and the phenomena they explain is construed as a source of tension between scientific and religious explanations (e.g., creationism vs. evolution) or between different forms of scientific explanation (e.g., Lamarck’s vs. Darwin’s theory of evolution). However, recent research suggests that competing explanations exist not only across individuals within the same community but also within individuals, who maintain competing explanations. This chapter explores this phenomenon of “explanatory coexistence” and analyzes its implications for conceptual change, or knowledge restructuring, at the level of individual concepts. Conceptual change is often better construed as a process of augmentation, in which early-developing concepts coexist with later-developing concepts because both types of concepts remain useful for predicting and explaining the natural world, albeit in different circumstances or for different purposes.

This chapter discusses an examination of the periods of Hindu law. It follows the late classical stage and the medieval ages. It also presents a postmodern analysis that aims to determine how the critical transition from dharma to law in the modernist sense of state law happened during these periods. It also incorporates an investigation of any conceptual changes during the Muslim rule in vast tracts of the subcontinent and as a result of British rule and colonial administration.