Susan E. Carey
Susan E. Carey
Professor Emeritus of Psychology
Professor Emeritus of Psychology
Harvard University
Harvard University
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The human conceptual repertoire poses a formidable challenge to the cognitive sciences. Humans are the only species who can ponder orders of infinity, the causes and cure of global warming, or any of literally billions of propositions formulated over the the hundreds of thousands of concepts no other animal represents. Susan Carey’s research concerns the development of concepts in the child and adult (i.e., over ontogenesis), and the cultural construction of concepts over history. Her research is informed by insights from philosophical analyses of concepts, historical analyses of conceptual change in science, and experimental studies of human infants, young children and adults, and of non-human primates. Understanding conceptual development requires characterizing the initial representational repertoire, what changes with development, and the learning mechanisms that underlie these changes. Dr. Carey’s research specifies the conceptually rich building blocks of human cognition and documents conceptual discontinuities, episodes of change that increase representational power or involve the construction of conceptual systems incommensurable with those they supplant. With respect to the mechanisms that underlie conceptual change, Carey has concentrated on a bootstrapping process first sketched by historians and philosophers of science that she calls “Quinian bootstrapping.” Current case studies include representations of abstract relations and logical connectives, and conceptual changes within intuitive theories of biology and physical reasoning.
The human conceptual repertoire poses a formidable challenge to the cognitive sciences. Humans are the only species who can ponder orders of infinity, the causes and cure of global warming, or any of literally billions of propositions formulated over the the hundreds of thousands of concepts no other animal represents. Susan Carey’s research concerns the development of concepts in the child and adult (i.e., over ontogenesis), and the cultural construction of concepts over history. Her research is informed by insights from philosophical analyses of concepts, historical analyses of conceptual change in science, and experimental studies of human infants, young children and adults, and of non-human primates. Understanding conceptual development requires characterizing the initial representational repertoire, what changes with development, and the learning mechanisms that underlie these changes. Dr. Carey’s research specifies the conceptually rich building blocks of human cognition and documents conceptual discontinuities, episodes of change that increase representational power or involve the construction of conceptual systems incommensurable with those they supplant. With respect to the mechanisms that underlie conceptual change, Carey has concentrated on a bootstrapping process first sketched by historians and philosophers of science that she calls “Quinian bootstrapping.” Current case studies include representations of abstract relations and logical connectives, and conceptual changes within intuitive theories of biology and physical reasoning.
Carey received her BA from Radcliffe College and her PhD in Experimental Psychology from Harvard University, studying with George Miller, Jerome Bruner and Roger Brown. She taught at MIT (Psychology Department, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences) from 1973–1996, at NYU (Psychology Department) from 1996–2001 and was Henry A. Morss Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Psychology at Harvard (Psychology Department) from 2001, when she cofounded the Laboratory for Developmental Studies with Elizabeth Spelke, until her retirement in 2023. Since 2023, she has been a Visiting Scholar in the Psychology Department at NYU and an affiliate faculty member of Cognitive Science at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Carey received her BA from Radcliffe College and her PhD in Experimental Psychology from Harvard University, studying with George Miller, Jerome Bruner and Roger Brown. She taught at MIT (Psychology Department, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences) from 1973–1996, at NYU (Psychology Department) from 1996–2001 and was Henry A. Morss Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Psychology at Harvard (Psychology Department) from 2001, when she cofounded the Laboratory for Developmental Studies with Elizabeth Spelke, until her retirement in 2023. Since 2023, she has been a Visiting Scholar in the Psychology Department at NYU and an affiliate faculty member of Cognitive Science at the CUNY Graduate Center.
For more details, see her 2022 memoir: “Becoming a Cognitive Scientist,” and her biographical discussion at Growing Up in Science.
For more details, see her 2022 memoir: “Becoming a Cognitive Scientist,” and her biographical discussion at Growing Up in Science.
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