Reasoning About Purpose and Design in Nature

Separate bodies of research suggest that young children have a broad tendency to reason about natural phenomena in terms of purpose and an orientation toward intention-based accounts of the origins of natural entities. This article explores these results further by drawing together recent findings from various areas of cognitive developmental research to address the following question: Rather than being ‘‘artificialists’’ in Piagetian terms, are children ‘‘intuitive theists’’—disposed to view natural phenomena as resulting from nonhuman design? A review of research on children’s concepts of agency, imaginary companions, and understanding of artifacts suggests that by the time children are around 5 years of age, this description of them may have explanatory value and practical relevance. Piaget’s (1929) claim that children are ‘‘artificialists’’ who draw on their subjective intentional experience to conclude that all things are made by people for a purpose has encountered substantial skepticism in the past few decades of cognitive developmental research. This is because, at core, Piaget’s proposal embodied not just the suggestion that children misunderstand the limits of human creative power, but a stronger claim about the profound incommensurability of children’s and adults’ conceptual systems. Specifically, Piaget believed that young children indiscriminately generate artificialist explanations because they are psychologically incapable of conceiving of physical causes, a shortcoming that he argued rendered them insensitive to the fundamental distinction between natural kinds and artifacts. Research since Piaget has challenged these assumptions. Not only can children reason in physical-causal terms from infancy (e.g., Baillargeon, 1993), but they also recognize that people make artifacts, not natural entities (e.g., Gelman & Kremer, 1991). But although these results may put some aspects of Piaget’s interpretation to rest, recent research has raised the specter of Piaget’s findings once more. Consistent with Piaget’s results, contemporary studies have found that, although children are not entirely indiscriminate, they do indeed evidence a general bias to treat objects and behaviors as existing for a purpose (Kelemen, 1999b, 1999c, 2003; but see Keil, 1992) and are also broadly inclined to view natural phenomena as intentionally created, albeit by a nonhuman agent (Evans, 2000b, 2001; Gelman & Kremer, 1991). This article explores these findings further by drawing them together with other recent cognitive developmental research to address the following question: Even if children are not artificialists, as Piaget conceived of the term, are they perhaps ‘‘intuitive theists’’—predisposed to construe natural objects as though they are nonhuman artifacts, the products of nonhuman design? PROMISCUOUS TELEOLOGY AND ‘‘CREATIONISM’’ IN