What happened to cognitive science?

Núñez, R., Allen, M., Gao, R. et al. What happened to cognitive science?. Nat Hum Behav 3, 782–791 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0626-2

Abstract: More than a half-century ago, the ‘cognitive revolution’, with the influential tenet ‘cognition is computation’, launched the investigation of the mind through a multidisciplinary endeavour called cognitive science. Despite significant diversity of views regarding its definition and intended scope, this new science, explicitly named in the singular, was meant to have a cohesive subject matter, complementary methods and integrated theories. Multiple signs, however, suggest that over time the prospect of an integrated cohesive science has not materialized. Here we investigate the status of the field in a data-informed manner, focusing on four indicators, two bibliometric and two socio-institutional. These indicators consistently show that the devised multi-disciplinary program failed to transition to a mature inter-disciplinary coherent field. Bibliometrically, the field has been largely subsumed by (cognitive) psychology, and educationally, it exhibits a striking lack of curricular consensus, raising questions about the future of the cognitive science enterprise.

The final two paragraphs:

In sum, following Imre Lakatos, cognitive science appears to have failed to generate “a successful research program” (p. 48). In his terms, the hard core of a successful research pro- gram remains largely irrefutable; its basic tenets and conjectures stay unchallenged, “tenaciously protected from refutation by a vast ‘protective belt’ of auxiliary hypotheses” (p. 4). Cognitive science with its (arguably reductionistic) fundamental features, has seen its hard core progressively challenged and to some extent refuted from within by various schools and approaches, and it has failed to build a robust protective belt (of “auxiliary hypotheses”) around a coherent hard core. In Lakatos’ terms, this has led not to a progressive problemshift but to a “degenerating problemshift,” resulting in an unsuccessful research program (p. 48). This interpretation is supported by scientometrics data, which show that in the dynamics of academic and scientific evolution, cognitive science failed to move from a collection of enthusiastic multidisciplinary efforts to an integrated coherent interdisciplinary field. But, importantly, it is supported also by the socio-institutional data analyzed here, which show a substantial lack of consensus across universities and colleges on what the curriculum is or should be when it comes to granting a degree in cognitive science. Acknowledging this reality has research, educational and professional policy-making implications: in the end, what exactly is the subject matter of this field? If a degree in cognitive science is to be granted, what contents should be taught and by whom? What should employers expect to be the knowledge and skills of applicants with a cognitive science degree? To what extent is the training in cognitive science necessary for forming the new generation of scientists of the mind?

The cognitive revolution was largely a normative anti-behaviourist counter-revolution, whose inspiring legacy was to bring to the fore the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration. But today, the exploding and exciting contemporary scientific study of the mind appears to have left the cognitive revolution behind, in a gradual, non-normative and non-revolutionary manner, for the moment not settling on any particular paradigm or research program. It is up to future generations of scholars to figure out how, in the post-cognitive-revolution era, to best proceed with the ever-fascinating enterprise of understanding the multiple and diverse dimensions of the mind.

I would add, that where cognitive science has become something of a school in contemporary literary criticism, it has abandoned any reference to computation as a model or metaphor for mental processes: On the Poverty of Cognitive Criticism and the Importance of Computation and Form (2019).