Experimental Methods for Understanding Babies

But why should you believe us instead of those benighted experts who thought babies couldn't really see? How can we say we actually do know what babies think? With the help of videotape, scientists have developed ingenious experimental techniques to ask babies what they know. One whole set of techniques has been designed to answer two simple questions: Do babies think that two things are the same or different? And if they think they're different, do they prefer one to the other? You can prese...

 Science Works Better than Religion

Religion, magic, science: All assume a reality behind the commonplace that gives meaning and structure to the world, and which might somehow be made to work for our benefit. Thus we have offered prayers, incense, and sacrifice to the gods, cast magical spells and incantations, or built, for example, colossally expensive particle accelerators to probe the inner secrets of atoms and the first moments of the ultra-hot big bang. To what effect? As for prayer, the gods have been dramatically nonf...