Cognitive science is a study of human universals. This assumption, which we will refer to as the Newtonian principle (NP), explicitly or implicitly pervades the theory, methods, and prose of most cognitive research. This is despite at least half a century of sustained critique by cross-cultural and anthropologically oriented researchers and glaring counterexamples such as the study of literacy. We argue that a key reason for this intransigence is that the NP solves the boundary problem of cognitive science. Since studying the idiosyncratic cognitive features of an individual is not a generalizable scientific enterprise, what scale of generalization in cognitive science is legitimate and interesting? The NP solution is a priori-only findings generalizing to all humans are legitimate. This approach is clearly flawed; however, critiques of the NP fail to provide any alternative solution. In fact, some anti-NP branches of research have abandoned generalizability altogether. Sailing between the scylla and charybdis of NP and hermeneutics, we propose an explicit, alternative solution to the boundary problem. Namely, building on many previous efforts, we combine cultural-evolutionary theory with a newly defined principle of articulation. This framework requires work on any given cognitive feature to explicitly hypothesize the universal or group-specific environments in which it emerges. Doing so shifts the question of legitimate generalizability from flawed, a priori assumptions to being a target of explicit claims and theorizing. Moreover, the articulation framework allows us to integrate existing findings across research traditions and motivates a range of future directions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

---

超越牛顿：为什么普遍性假设对认知科学至关重要，以及如何最终超越它们。


认知科学是对人类共性的研究。这种假设，我们将其称为牛顿原理（NP），明确或隐含地渗透到大多数认知研究的理论、方法和散文中。尽管跨文化和人类学研究人员持续批评了至少半个世纪，并且出现了诸如读写能力研究等明显的反例，但情况仍然如此。我们认为，这种顽固的一个关键原因是 NP 解决了认知科学的边界问题。由于研究个体的特殊认知特征并不是一项可概括的科学事业，那么认知科学中的概括程度如何才是合理且有趣的呢？ NP 解决方案是仅先验的发现，推广到所有人都是合法的。这种方法显然是有缺陷的；然而，对国民党的批评未能提供任何替代解决方案。事实上，一些反NP研究分支已经完全放弃了普遍性。在 NP 和解释学的 Scylla 和 Charybdis 之间航行，我们提出了边界问题的明确的替代解决方案。也就是说，在之前许多努力的基础上，我们将文化进化理论与新定义的表达原则结合起来。该框架需要对任何给定的认知特征进行研究，以明确假设它出现的普遍或特定群体的环境。这样做将合法的普遍性问题从有缺陷的先验假设转变为明确主张和理论化的目标。此外，衔接框架使我们能够整合跨研究传统的现有发现，并激发一系列未来的方向。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。