Why Read Another Book on Human Development? Understanding Human Development Takes a Metatheory and Multiple Disciplines

Abstract

The description, explanation, and enhancement of development in individuals and groups of individuals are seen as important goals of scientific inquiry in most of the social, behavioral, and life sciences. At the same time, scholars working in these three research traditions increasingly agree that cultural and biological processes interact in the co-construction of human ontogeny. This broad and growing consensus provides a fertile common ground for scientific exchange. In the process, communication across research traditions and disciplines, while acknowledging necessary differences in terminology and methodology, needs to establish a common conceptual framework. Psychology, with its links to sociology, cultural anthropology, and history, on the one hand, and to cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and developmental biology, on the other, appears to be in a good position to mediate such a framework. The general goal of the present volume is to explore the tenability of this assertion.