This important article by Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg (full version in Science, 18 May 2007) examines the psychological wellsprings of resistance to scientific explanations of the world’s phenomena. Specifically, it discusses the circumstances in which developing children fail to internalise information that comes from science.
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Complete entry
Posted by
Athena Andreadis on 06/01 at 01:43 PM
Hmmm... believing that the earth is held up by elephants or turtles is not necessarily high on the scale of common sense, nor are many traditional teachings intuitively obvious. I suspect the strongest reasons are that 1) people don't think much of these issues unless they directly impinge on their lives and 2) most people are content to go with the majority.
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