Graduate students, scientists and other researchers may find theory construction a rather complicated business. But first and second-graders seem to come up with explanatory answers to account for events with astonishing ease.
Some "instant theories" concocted by six and seven-year-olds to answer questions have been collected by Alice Morgan and appear in her book, If You Ask Me ...! (Troy University Press; Troy, Alabama, 1978). Here is a sample:
What are clouds?
"Soft cotton glued together."
Why are there clouds?
"Rain is in the middle."
How does it get out?
"Thunder breaks the glue."
We may wonder how long it will take this budding, young theorist to discover that giving answers is only part of the work? That an equally demanding or even greater task may involve arriving at the questions.
But let's not ask the fourth grade, San Francisco student who paused at his school's display of a sample barnyard—with a live cow, two calves, a pig, lamb and chickens—and asked, "How do pigs lay bacon?"
