Childhood Origins of Adult Resistance to Science

Bloom and Weisberg call attention to an important and as yet not fully appreciated scientific story, to the increasing body of observations (from genetics as well as developmental psychology) indicating that children come into the world not as fully naive beings whose understandings are shaped entirely by those around them but rather with a pre-existing set of abilities and expectations relevant to the world they are born into. This has important implications for education that Bloom and Weisberg appropriately point out: teaching (and parenting) needs to address not so much what the student "lacks" and more what the student "has".

There is though an important additional feature of the observations underlying the story (perhaps in this case more from genetics and developmental neuroscience than from developmental psychology) with an additional implication that Bloom and Weisberg don't point out, perhaps because it might challenge their broader story: we not only come into the world having things but the things we have at that time may be different for each of us. Before one can address what the student "has", one has to know what it is, and it seems increasingly likely that this is much more variable from person to person than we (including perhaps Bloom and Weisberg) are used to thinking.

A "naive physics" (and comparable pre-experiential expectations about language and mathematics) is at this point an older story; what Bloom and Weisberg usefully emphasize is the more recent extension due to observations on "naive psychology", including tendencies to see the world as a "dualist", "in terms of design and purpose", and to "defer to the views of the community." This is relatively recent work, methodologically less straightforward, and it remains to be seen how well it stands the tests of time.

Of particular concern with regard to the work on "naive psychology" is the as yet to be fully explored issue of how significant child rearing and other early (pre-school) experiences may be in the development of cognitive and particularly social expectations. While much of the relevant work on naive physics, language, and mathematics can and has been done with infants, Bloom and Weisberg tend to speak largely of "four and five year olds" in regard to naive psychology. This is certainly old enough so that one is less inclined in this case to grant the presumption of naivete, in the sense of lacking experience with one's surroundings. It is not hard to imagine that some kinds of early child rearing practices, for example, would more encourage "dualist", "design and purpose", and "defer to the community" mindsets and others would would less do so.

My concern with regard to this issue, as well with the likelihood of significant individual variation, isn't so much that I doubt the usefulness of the story that Bloom and Weisberg are telling as a basis for further research. Existing observations certainly are adequate to motivate continuing research on how much people generally start with (allowing for individual variation) in terms of a "native psychology". Rather, what I want to warn against is the too rapid translation of a legitimate scientific story into a "truth" that people take as a given for practical purposes, in this case in the educational and political arena.

While I think teachers (and others) can usefully proceed on the general assumption that people they are working with have their own understandings that need to be taken account of, I'm much less certain it would be wise or productive to presume that these uniformly and inevitably take the particular forms that Bloom and Weisberg outline. To do so would be to ignore potentially important individual variation (why do some people in some cultures adopt dualism and others growing up in the same cultures not?) as well as potentially significant routes of change (maybe its as important for particular objectives to change child rearing as it is educational practices?). There is also the ever present danger of hearing stories like that of Bloom and Weisberg as describing "human nature", ie something that can't be changed and so one shouldn't try.

It seems to me that Bloom and Weisberg wouldn't themselves endorse the "inevitable human nature" reading of their story, given their evident interest in contributing to enhancement of scientific literacy (particularly in the American population). I do though think they may be doing that cause a bit of a disservice by setting it in the broader context they do. Among other things, Bloom and Weisberg's story might incline people to believe that a "resistance to science" can't be altered in adulthood. I think it can, with some new stories about science (cf Revisiting Science in Culture: Science as Story Telling and Story Revision and Science as Story Telling in Action).

I would certainly be happier if more Americans were familiar with the scientific stories of evolution and global warming and the relation of the mental and the physical (among other things). And I suspect that both their "counter-intuitive" character and their differences from stories told by cultural "authorities" contribute to Americans not being as familiar or comfortable with them as I would like. At the same time, I'm less inclined to diagnose the malady as a "resistance" specifically to "scientific ideas," or to encourage new educational practices that would give greater credence to scientists as "knowledgeable ... confident" authorities.

Scientists should not be in the position of appealing to peoples' wishes (however they originate) for authority or bewailing peoples' reluctance to grant authority to the products they create. Those products are always and inevitably "stories", tentative and challengeable ways to make sense of observations available at any given time. They should, like stories from any source, always be treated skeptically by everyone, including scientists themselves. The important task for science education is not to assure that scientific stories are accepted as truth but rather to be sure that people understand their usefulness for what it is: a way of making sense of things based on lots of observations and an underlying process of ongoing and skeptical evaluation. The single most important task of science education is not to get people to accept particular scientific stories but rather to give them the wherewithal to critically evaluate the stories they hear, from whatever source they come. And this holds whether it turns out that all of us, some of us, or only a few of us start life inclined to look for authorities or not.