Modules and theories

I and others have made a case for the similarities between scientific knowledge and children's knowledge, and between scientific change and cognitive development (Gopnik and Wellman, 1992, 1994; Gopnik, 1988; Carey, 1986, 1988; Keil, 1989; Wellman, 1990). In the rest of this chapter I will call this general view of cognitive development the ‘theory-formation theory’.

However, it is important to say that not all knowledge is like science, and not all development is like scientific change. The analogy to science would be of little interest if it were. My claim is that there are quite distinctive and special cognitive processes that are responsible both for scientific progress and for particular kinds of development in children. Other kinds of cognition and cognitive development may be quite different. It is my further claim that theories and theory changes, in particular, are responsible for the changes in children's understanding of the mind. But this is an empirical claim and it only gains explanatory force if we can contrast it with other possible explanations. In previous work, I have outlined the distinctive features of a theory-formation account in some detail, and have contrasted it with the predictions of a simulation theory (Gopnik & Wellman, 1992). In this paper, I will focus instead on the contrast between this account and modularity accounts. These provide one contrast case to the theory-formation view.