Imagining the Impossible: Magical, Scientific, and Religious Thinking in Children

The study of early cognitive development has emphasized the way in which young children act like scientists, testing and revising theories about the physical, biological, and psychological world. Evidence of this early understanding of the natural order has led researchers to reconsider children's thinking about magical, religious, or otherwise supernatural orders. The present volume offers reviews of new lines of research on children's thinking that stretch beyond the ordinary boundaries of reality. More than being "little scientists," children are here considered as "little magicians," "little metaphysicians," "little theologians" and "little story tellers" or "dramatists," imagining other-worldly possibilities.