ABSTRACT
In child development (or behavior development) research, it is possible to speak of five current spheres of inquiry, and of a sixth that is on the near horizon. Three of them, the developmental, behavior-genetic, and clinical spheres, are so well known that they are treated only briefly. Two, the cross-cultural and the evolutionary, are treated at some length (pages 232 and 240 respectively), both because of the author’s expertise and because of rapid recent change in these spheres. The sixth, or epigenetic, is a proposed future sphere intended to answer directly Anastasi’s question ‘How?’ (see p. 251). It is being created by the crest of the wave of molecular genetics currently breaking-a mode of inquiry very like a true Kuhnian paradigm. The epigenetic sphere will come into being one way or another, but it will be preferable if it can emerge as an orderly synthesis, rather than a disorderly confrontation.
