ABSTRACT

The effort to understand and explain phenomena can have considerable adaptive value, as Schank (1986) has shown. When events do not conform to our expectations, trying to explain them may provide a basis for more accurate predictions in the future. It is often suggested that an urge to understand is innate in humans. This may be true, but the statement needs qualification. In the first place, human beings are much more inclined to explain unusual phenomena than to explain usual ones. This is consistent with Schank’s view that failed expectations, rather than some general explanatory urge, lie behind efforts at understanding, with van Lehn’s (1990) account of explanation as impasse-driven, and with Berzonsky’s (1971) demonstration that students are better at explaining malfunctions than normal functions. A second qualification is essential if we are to consider understanding within an adaptationist framework: Under some conditions, it is adaptive not to seek understanding. This fact takes on great importance in the context of schooling. School is a place where the pursuit of understanding is supposedly given a high priority, but it is also a social institution with conditions of its own to which students adapt, and it is therefore important to examine whether these conditions favor adaptation through or without understanding.