Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- 1 The Makings of the Magical Mind: The Nature and Function of Sympathetic Magical Thinking
- 2 Phenomenalistic Perception and Rational Understanding in the Mind of an Individual: A Fight for Dominance
- 3 Metamorphosis and Magic: The Development of Children's Thinking About Possible Events and Plausible Mechanisms
- 4 The Development of Beliefs About Direct Mental-Physical Causality in Imagination, Magic, and Religion
- 5 Intuitive Ontology and Cultural Input in the Acquisition of Religious Concepts
- 6 On Not Falling Down to Earth: Children's Metaphysical Questions
- 7 Putting Different Things Together: The Development of Metaphysical Thinking
- 8 Versions of Personal Storytelling/Versions of Experience: Genres as Tools for Creating Alternate Realities
- 9 The Influence of Religious Beliefs on Parental Attitudes About Children's Fantasy Behavior
- 10 Religion, Culture, and Beliefs About Reality in Moral Reasoning
- 11 Beyond Scopes: Why Creationism Is Here to Stay
- 12 Knowledge Change in Response to Data in Science, Religion, and Magic
- 13 Theology and Physical Science: A Story of Developmental Influence at the Boundaries
- Index
7 - Putting Different Things Together: The Development of Metaphysical Thinking
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- 1 The Makings of the Magical Mind: The Nature and Function of Sympathetic Magical Thinking
- 2 Phenomenalistic Perception and Rational Understanding in the Mind of an Individual: A Fight for Dominance
- 3 Metamorphosis and Magic: The Development of Children's Thinking About Possible Events and Plausible Mechanisms
- 4 The Development of Beliefs About Direct Mental-Physical Causality in Imagination, Magic, and Religion
- 5 Intuitive Ontology and Cultural Input in the Acquisition of Religious Concepts
- 6 On Not Falling Down to Earth: Children's Metaphysical Questions
- 7 Putting Different Things Together: The Development of Metaphysical Thinking
- 8 Versions of Personal Storytelling/Versions of Experience: Genres as Tools for Creating Alternate Realities
- 9 The Influence of Religious Beliefs on Parental Attitudes About Children's Fantasy Behavior
- 10 Religion, Culture, and Beliefs About Reality in Moral Reasoning
- 11 Beyond Scopes: Why Creationism Is Here to Stay
- 12 Knowledge Change in Response to Data in Science, Religion, and Magic
- 13 Theology and Physical Science: A Story of Developmental Influence at the Boundaries
- Index
Summary
That the human spirit will never give up metaphysical researches is as little to be expected as that we should prefer to give up breathing altogether, in order to avoid inhaling impure air. There will, therefore, always be metaphysics in the world; nay, everyone, especially every reflective man, will have it and, for want of a recognized standard, will shape it for himself after his own pattern.
(Immanuel Kant, 1783/1977, p. 107)All our attitudes, moral, practical or emotional, as well as religious, are due to the “objects” of our consciousness, the things which we believe exist, whether really or ideally, along with ourselves.
(William James, 1902/1990, p. 55)In its brief history, cognitive developmental science has offered two seemingly contradictory pictures of the way children think about the nature of the world. Early portraits posed children as primitive, magical thinkers, fundamentally confused about the nature of reality. The current fashion, however, is to present even young children as sciencelike theorists, sorting reality into different kinds and causes.
Contemporary researchers have sought to replace the old picture with the new one, complaining that the earlier depiction fails to do justice to reality. Piaget's early work is particularly criticized as suffering from poor technique. His questions are said to be too abstract, the subject matter too unfamiliar, and the coding too inadequate to capture the richness of children's early intuitive understanding (see Wellman, 1990).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Imagining the ImpossibleMagical, Scientific, and Religious Thinking in Children, pp. 179 - 211Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
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