Topic: explanation

Henk de Regt examines scientific understanding as the ability to use a theory productively, rather than merely possessing facts or a feeling of insight. The conversation considers explanation, scientific skills, realism and metaphors, and how the account applies to understanding in humans and machines.

How and why are analogies spontaneously generated? Despite the prominence of analogy in learning and reasoning, there is little research on whether and how analogy is spontaneously generated in everyday settings. Here we fill this gap by gathering parents' answers to children's real questions, and examining analogy use in parental explanations. Study 1 found that parents used analogy spontaneously in their explanations, despite no prompt nor mention of analogy in the instruction. Study 2 found that these analogical explanations were rated highly by parents, schoolteachers, and university stude