ABSTRACT
The previous chapters by Goldin-Meadow, Haier, McClelland, Merzenich, and Siegler reflect a surprising convergence in ideas regarding change of neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, and developmental psychologists. An impressive unity emerges as we watch these scientists struggle to understand the basic processes that underlie learning and cognitive change. As Merzenich points out, the “mind is expressed in physical form as the brain, [which] can in principle be studied to any level of detail.” Ten years ago, such a statement might have been interpreted as politeness, equivalent to Chairman Mao’s famous exhortation to “let a hundred flowers bloom.” However, these five papers represent more than just the blooming of different research traditions. They show, instead, that the study of mind has become genuinely interdisciplinary, with each field contributing in direct ways to the others. Rather than researchers from different disciplines seeming to describe different minds, the portrayals from the three disciplines seem to be evolving into an integrated description of one mind. In this chapter, I focus on this integration, as I see it.
