Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Science as we’ve come to understand it today – that is, conducting experiments using a hypothesis-testing method – has existed only since about the 17th century. But the Homo sapiens brain has been around since the Pleistocene, so how is it that we’ve gotten so good at the kind of science we do in such a short amount of time? In this interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn from the PBS series Closer to Truth, the US psychologist and philosopher Alison Gopnik argues that scientific skills, including making statistical inferences and testing our environments through trial and error, are implicit in children, even those as young as 20 months. Drawing on research conducted at her laboratory at the University of California, Berkley, Gopnik believes that the fundamentals of scientific thinking appear in humans just about as soon as we start to speak. In other words, as she puts it: ‘It’s not that children are little scientists, it’s actually that scientists are big children.’
Video by Closer to Truth
video
Astronomy
The remarkable innovations inspired by our need to know the night sky
5 minutes
video
Knowledge
Why it takes more than a lifetime to truly understand a single meadow
11 minutes
video
Physics
Groundbreaking visualisations show how the world of the nucleus gives rise to our own
10 minutes
video
Earth science and climate
There’s a ‘climate bomb’ ticking beneath the Arctic ice. How can we prepare?
8 minutes
video
Political philosophy
The radical activist couple who fought for social change in the courtroom
21 minutes
video
Physics
To change the way you see the Moon, view it from the Sun’s perspective
5 minutes
video
Ecology and environmental sciences
GPS tracking reveals stunning insights into the patterns of migratory birds
6 minutes
video
Human rights and justice
Can providing humanitarian aid be illegal? A troubling case from the US-Mexico border
17 minutes
video
Space exploration
The rarely told story of the fruit flies, primates and canines that preceded us in space
12 minutes