The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life

by Alison Gopnik

What is childhood? It’s a distinctive developmental period in which young human beings are uniquely dependent on adults. Childhood literally couldn’t exist without caregivers. Why do we go through a period of childhood at all? Human beings have a much more extended period of immaturity and dependence, a much longer childhood, than other species, and this period of immaturity has become longer as human history has gone on (as we parents of twenty-somethings may recognize with a sigh). Why make babies so helpless for so long, and why make adults invest so much time and energy in caring for them? This protracted period of immaturity is intimately tied up with the human capacity for change. Our human capacities for imagination and learning have great advantages; they allow us to adapt to more different environments than any other species and to change our own environments in a way that no other animal can. But they also have one great disadvantage—learning takes time. You don’t want to be stuck exploring all the new possible ways to hunt deer when you haven’t eaten for two days, or learning all the accumulated cultural wisdom about saber-toothed tigers when one is chasing you. It would be a good idea for me to spend a week exploring all the capabilities of my new computer, as my teenage son would, but with the saber-toothed tigers of grant deadlines and classes breathing down my neck, I’ll just go on relying on the old routines. An animal that depends on the accumulated knowle...