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Scientific Thinking and Reasoning The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning Keith J. Holyoak and Robert G. Morrison Print publication date: Nov 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780199734689 Published to Oxford Handbooks Online: Nov-12 Subject: Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199734689.001.0001 Scientific Thinking and Reasoning Kevin N. Dunbar, David Klahr DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199734689.013.0035 Abstract and Keywords Scientific thinking refers to both thinking about the content of science and the set of reasoning processes that permeate the field of science: induction, deduction, experimental design, causal reasoning, concept formation, hypothesis testing, and so on. Here we cover both the history of research on scientific thinking and the different approaches that have been used, highlighting common themes that have emerged over the past 50 years of research. Future research will focus on the collaborative aspects of scientific thinking, on effective methods for teaching science, and on the neural underpinnings of the scientific mind. scientific reasoning, causal reasoning, hypothesis testing, analogical reasoning in science, problem solving, conceptual change, computational modeling, constructivism, science education, cognitive development, educational neuroscience There is no unitary activity called “scientific discovery”; there are activities of designing experiments, gathering data, inventing and developing observational instruments, formulating and modifying theories, deducing consequences from theories, making predictions from theories, testing theories, inducing regularities and invariants from data, discovering theoretical constructs, and others. — Simon, Langley, & Bradshaw, 1981, p. 2 Page 1 of 52 Scientific Thinking and Reasoning PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2013. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy). Subscriber: OUP - OHO Editorial Board; date: 26 April 2013 What Is Scientific Thinking and Reasoning? There are two kinds of thinking we call “scientific.” The first, and most obvious, is thinking about the content of science. People are engaged in scientific thinking when they are reasoning about such entities and processes as force, mass, energy, equilibrium, magnetism, atoms, photosynthesis, radiation, geology, or astrophysics (and, of course, cognitive psychology!). The second kind of scientific thinking includes the set of reasoning processes that permeate the field of science: induction, deduction, experimental design, causal reasoning, concept formation, hypothesis testing, and so on. However, these reasoning processes are not unique to scientific thinking: They are the very same processes involved in everyday thinking. As Einstein put it: The scientific way of forming concepts differs from that which we use in our daily life, not basically, but merely in the more precise definition of concepts and conclusions; more painstaking and systematic choice of experimental material, and greater logical economy. (The Common Language of Science, 1941, reprinted in Einstein, 1950, p. 98) Nearly 40 years after Einstein's remarkably insightful statement, Francis Crick offered a similar perspective: that great discoveries in science result not from extraordinary mental processes, but rather from rather common ones. The greatness of the discovery lies in the thing discovered. I think what needs to be emphasized about the discovery of the double helix is that the path to it was, scientifically speaking, fairly commonplace. What was important was not the way it was discovered, but the object discovered—the structure of DNA itself. (Crick, 1988, p. 67; emphasis added) Under this view, scientific thinking involves the same general-purpose cognitive processes—such as induction, deduction, analogy, problem solving, and causal reasoning—that humans apply in nonscientific domains. These processes are covered in several different chapters of this handbook: Rips, Smith, & Medin, Chapter 11 on induction; Evans, Chapter 8 on deduction; Holyoak, Chapter 13 on analogy; Bassok & Novick, Chapter 21 on problem solving; and Cheng & Buehner, Chapter 12 on causality. One might question the claim that the highly specialized procedures associated with doing science in the “real world” can be understood by investigating the thinking processes used in laboratory studies of the sort described in this volume. However, when the focus is on major scientific breakthroughs, rather than on Page 2 of 52 Scientific Thinking and Reasoning PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2013. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy). Subscriber: OUP - OHO Editorial Board; date: 26 April 2013 the more routine, incremental progress in a field, the psychology of problem solving provides a rich source of ideas about how such discoveries might occur. As Simon and his colleagues put it: It is understandable, if ironic, that ‘normal’ science fits … the description of expert problem solving, while ‘revolutionary’ science fits the description of problem solving by novices. It is understandable because scientific activity, particularly at the revolutionary end of the continuum, is concerned with the discovery of new truths, not with the application of truths that are already well-known … it is basically a journey into unmapped terrain. Consequently, it is mainly characterized, as is novice problem solving, by trial-and-error search. The search may be highly selective—but it reaches its goal only after many halts, turnings, and back-trackings. (Simon, Langley, & Bradshaw, 1981, p. 5) The research literature on scientific thinking can be roughly categorized according to the two types of scientific thinking listed in the opening paragraph of this chapter: (1) One category focuses on thinking that directly involves scientific content. Such research ranges from studies of young children reasoning about the sun-moon-earth system (Vosniadou & Brewer, 1992) to college students reasoning about chemical equilibrium (Davenport, Yaron, Klahr, & Koedinger, 2008), to research that investigates collaborative problem solving by world-class researchers in real-world molecular biology labs (Dunbar, 1995). (2) The other category focuses on “general” cognitive processes, but it tends to do so by analyzing people's problem-solving behavior when they are presented with relatively complex situations that involve the integration and coordination of several different types of processes, and that are designed to capture some essential features of “real- world” science in the psychology laboratory (Bruner, Goodnow, & Austin, 1956; Klahr & Dunbar, 1988; Mynatt, Doherty, & Tweney, 1977). There are a number of overlapping research traditions that have been used to investigate scientific thinking. We will cover both the history of research on scientific thinking and the different approaches that have been used, highlighting common themes that have emerged over the past 50 years of research. A Brief History of Research on Scientific Thinking Page 3 of 52 Scientific Thinking and Reasoning PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2013. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy). Subscriber: OUP - OHO Editorial Board; date: 26 April 2013 Science is often considered one of the hallmarks of the human species, along with art and literature. Illuminating the thought processes used in science thus reveal key aspects of the human mind. The thought processes underlying scientific thinking have fascinated both scientists and nonscientists because the products of science have transformed our world and because the process of discovery is shrouded in mystery. Scientists talk of the chance discovery, the flash of insight, the years of perspiration, and the voyage of discovery. These images of science have helped make the mental processes underlying the discovery process intriguing to cognitive scientists as they attempt to uncover what really goes on inside the scientific mind and how scientists really think. Furthermore, the possibilities that scientists can be taught to think better by avoiding mistakes that have been clearly identified in research on scientific thinking, and that their scientific process could be partially automated, makes scientific thinking a topic of enduring interest. The cognitive processes underlying scientific discovery and day-to-day scientific thinking have been a topic of intense scrutiny and speculation for almost 400 years (e.g., Bacon, 1620; Galilei 1638; Klahr 2000; Tweney, Doherty, & Mynatt, 1981). Understanding the nature of scientific thinking has been a central issue not only for our understanding of science but also for our understating of what it is to be human. Bacon's Novumm Organum in 1620 sketched out some of the key features of the ways that experiments are designed and data interpreted. Over the ensuing 400 years philosophers and scientists vigorously debated about the appropriate methods that
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