Foundations of the Mind: Children's Understanding of Reality
Subbotsky's goal is to investigate the nature of consciousness - a topic that most Western developmental psychologists might consider beyond the scope of empirical investigation. His intriguing thesis is that rational, scientifically based beliefs and what we would consider more primitive or magical beliefs coexist in the human mind across the life-span, that "with the appearance of a new form of thinking, previous ones by no means disappear." On this view, development consists not of learning how to think in a different way but of learning what sorts of situations call for which kind of thinking. His claim is not simply that young children occasionally entertain beliefs in magic and other forms of fantasy but that these quasi-magical beliefs are a legitimate component of consciousness and are present not just in infants and young children but throughout development.
