Young children have remarkable capacities for causal reasoning, which are part of the foundation of their scientific thinking abilities. In Constructing Science, Deena Weisberg and David Sobel trace the ways that young children's sophisticated causal reasoning abilities combine with other cognitive, metacognitive, and social factors to develop into a more mature set of scientific thinking abilities.

Conceptualizing scientific thinking as the suite of skills that allows people to generate hypotheses, solve problems, and explain aspects of the world, Weisberg and Sobel argue that understanding how this capacity develops can offer insights into how we can become a more scientifically literate society.

In this author meets critics session, Deena Weisberg will present an overview of the book, and respond to commentaries.

This event is supported by the Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences.

For more information about this event, please contact Ross.Pain@anu.edu.au