Scientific Thinking and its Development

Kevin Dunbar, McGill University (now at Dartmouth College) Scientific thinking refers to the thought processes that are used in science, including the cognitive processes involved in theory generation, experiment design, hypothesis testing, data interpretation, and scientific discovery. Many of these aspects of scientific thinking involve cognitive processes that have been investigated in their own right, such as induction, deduction, analogy, expertise, and problem solving. Research on scientific thinking uses many different methodologies such as analyzing historical records, conducting experiments on subjects that are given scientific problems, and building computer programs that make discoveries. Many researchers have noted that, like scientists, children must form theories and test their theories against the world. Research on the development of scientific thinking has been concerned with discovering how children design experiments, the ways that theory and data are linked together by children, and describing children’s theories of the natural world and science. There has been a tremendous amount of research on scientific thinking over the past forty years. One way of classifying research in this area is in terms of experimental, computational, and real-world investigations of scientific thinking. Other important areas not covered in this entry are historical and philosophical approaches to scientific thinking (See Nersessian, 1992; Thagard, 1992 for research in these areas).