The Disappearance of Insight

ENDORSEMENTS

“In this deeply original and beautifully written book, Frank Keil shows how children’s drive to ask ‘why’ and ‘how’ flourishes in an environment rich in visible mechanisms—and how modern technology, for all its power, can dampen this basic drive for understanding. The Disappearance of Insight is a thrilling book, in part a warning about how we will cope with a world of opaque machines, but also a celebration of the scientist within all of us—an eloquent defense of Virgil’s aphorism that ‘Happy is the one who has been able to know the causes of things.’”
—Paul Bloom, Professor of Psychology, University of Toronto; author of Psych: The Story of the Human Mind

“Keil’s magnum opus on insight assembles a lifetime of reflection, research, and discovery on the topics of human explanation and understanding. Explanation is our central cognitive process for understanding the world; we ask ‘why’ and ‘what’ questions to poke and prod the world, forming explanations that help us understand how it seems to work. Over his long career, Keil has been almost single-handedly responsible for many of the most interesting discoveries in the psychology of explanation.”
—Mark T. Keane, Professor, University College Dublin

“From one of the most creative and incisive minds in cognitive science, Frank Keil’s new book offers a striking analysis of childhood and cognition in today’s technology-saturated world. What happens when curiosity and the drive for explanation develop in an environment where mechanical parts and processes have been replaced with inscrutable microchips and algorithms? At once startling, wise, and hopeful, The Disappearance of Insight is full of the very insight it urges us to value and preserve: understanding not only the how and why of the world, but the how and why of our own minds.”
—Tania Lombrozo, author of Why We Ask Why: The Science of Explanation and the Human Drive to Understand

Frank C. Keil is the Charles C. and Dorothea S. Dilley Professor of Psychology, Linguistics, and Cognitive Science at Yale University. He received an NIH MERIT award and has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. His most recent book is Wonder: Childhood and the Lifelong Love of Science.

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