Conceptual Changes in Religious Concepts of Elementary ...

Educational Psychology, Vol. 22, No. 1, 2002

Conceptual Changes in Religious Concepts of Elementary Schoolchildren: The case of the house where God lives

DIMITRIS PNEVMATIKOS, European School of Luxembourg, Luxembourg and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Faculty of Education—Florina, Greece

The present paper was part of a larger project, which investigated the process of knowledge acquisition in Christian religion. The concept of God in particular is a core construct in any religion and it has been involved in a number of changes in the history of religions. Some of those changes were observed in the children’s constructions of the house that God lives in. Among children’s drawings we found changes which imply, in terms of Thagard (1992) not only belief revision, but also a conceptual change. However, hierarchy reinterpretation, in which the concept of God changes from the part of the cosmos to the creator (ontologically different from the creatures) we did not observe among the primary school children. The development of the different hierarchies we constructed on the basis of children’s drawings seems to follow the developmental changes, which took place in the history of Greek religions. Finally, there were some implications for Religious Education. ABSTRACT

Introduction Concepts: Conceptual Systems Concepts never stand alone. Gelman et al. (1994) concluded that they did not nd a point when children have concepts without theory-like beliefs. Thagard (1992) assumes that concepts can be understood as complex computational structures organised into kind-hierarchies and part-hierarchies, and that an understanding of conceptual revolutions requires much more than a view of the nature of isolated concepts. He proposed thinking of concepts as complex structures (conceptual systems) akin to frames (Minsky, 1975), but (1) giving special priority to kind and part-whole relations that establish hierarchies and (2) expressing factual information in rules that can be more complex than simple slots. If concepts can t together into conceptual systems in this way, a conceptual system can be analysed as a network of nodes, with each node corresponding to a concept, and each line in the network corresponding to a link between ISSN 0144-3410 print; ISSN 1469-5820 online/02/010093-20 Ó DOI: 10.1080/01443410120101279

2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd

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concepts. Thagard (1992) describes ve different kind of links we can nd between the concepts: Kind links (K) indicate that one concept is a kind of another; Instance links (I) indicate that some particular object is an instance of a concept; Rule links (R) express general, but not always universal relationships among concepts; Property links (H) indicate that an object Has as a property something; Part links (P) indicate that a whole has a given part. Moreover, relationships and higher-order predicates can also be expressed within conceptual networks. Conceptual Change If a conceptual system consists of a network of nodes with links, then conceptual change consists of adding or deleting nodes and links. Not all additions and deletions, however, are equally important. We can distinguish replacement of a conceptual system from simple deletions and additions if some of the previous links remain, indicating that the new concepts and links have a place in the new system similar to those in the old system. Hence, changes in kind-relations and part-relations, which are the two sets of relationships that specify the constituents of the world, usually involve a restructuring of conceptual system that is qualitatively different from mere addition or deletion of nodes and links because they affect the ontology of the concepts. Ontology is the branch of metaphysics, philosophy and cognitive science dealing with nature of being and it asks what fundamentally exists. Ontological questions usually concern what kinds of things exist and what they are made of. Belief Revision is not Conceptual Change Thagard (1992) distinguishes conceptual change from belief revision, in which relations between concepts are established or rejected without deeply affecting the concepts. Belief revision involves either the addition or deletion of beliefs. Addition of a new instance, a new weak rule in the hierarchy or a strong rule that plays a role in problem solving and explanation could be understood as belief revision. On the other hand, conceptual change comes in varying degrees: addition of new concepts, deletion of concepts, adding a new part- or kind-relation, collapsing part of a kind-hierarchy, abandoning the previous distinction, revisionary reorganisation in the hierarchies by branch jumping, that is, shifting a concept from one branch of a hierarchical tree to another, and nally, tree switching that is, changing the organising principle of a hierarchical tree (hierarchy reinterpretation in which the nature of the kind-relation or part-relation that constitutes a hierarchy changes). Reviewing the existing evidence from the scienti c elds of astronomy, biology, physics and psychology, Thagard (1992) concludes that the most dramatic kinds of conceptual change in the history of science are branch jumping and tree switching. Conceptual Change in Scientists and in Children Some psychologists (Chi et al., 1981; diSessa, 1982; McCloskey, 1983; Voss et al., 1983, Wiser & Carey, 1983; Vosniadou & Brewer, 1987) argue that children’s learning is like or almost like scienti c development in that it cannot be described merely in terms of accretion of new beliefs added to old ones, but it involves rejection of previously held beliefs and substantial conceptual change analogous to that we can nd in the history of science (Kuhn, 1962, 1970). In addition, researchers (diSessa, 1982;

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McCloskey, 1983; White, 1983) consider whether, in order to understand more complicated scienti c theories, students need to go through the same kind of conceptual changes undergone by the scientists who developed those theories. Contrasting conceptual change in scientists during revolutionary periods in the history of science with conceptual change in children and in students learning science, we can nd points in common but also important differences. Despite the claims of Carey (1985), Vosniadou & Brewer (1987, 1992), Chi (1988), Wellman (1990) and Keil (1989) that conceptual changes in children are similar or analogous in many respects to theory change in the history of science, Thagard (1992), in developing his theory, considers that conceptual development in children does not involve the most important conceptual changes, which are branch jumping and tree switching. Furthermore, Thagard, assuming that is possible for children’s knowledge of different domains to develop in different ways, expressed the need to investigate the matter in other elds of knowledge. The God Concept in Children: Pictorial Studies While studies of the idea of God in childhood and adolescence have a long history—beginning a century ago—they were conducted occasionally and sporadically, with no continuous theme. Their general outline is to describe that children’s ideas of God are different from those of adults and to locate children’s ideas on a Piagetian scale (i.e. Elkind, 1961; Goldman, 1964; Graebner, 1964; Babin, 1965; Bunnen, 1965; Deconchy, 1965, 1967; Pitts, 1976; Nye and Carlson, 1984; Roof & Roof, 1984; Heller, 1986) or meta-Piagetian theories of cognitive development (Pnevmatikos, 1993, 1995), or based to the Freudian tradition, to nd the relationship between the image of God and the image of actual or ideal parents (Larson & Knapp, 1964; Nelson, 1971; Vergote and Aubert, 1972; Rizzuto, 1979; Godin, 1985). In spite of differences of approach and sampling, studies have shown much consistency (see for a review Wright and Koppe, 1964; Hyde, 1990). Often the ideas of children are only verbalisms—words repeated in a correct context without proper understanding. Studies describe the initial ideas in children as corresponding to a fairy-tale stage, which during the school years transforms to a realistic stage, during which God is envisaged anthropomorphically in concrete human categories. Adolescents, from the age of eleven, begin to think of God abstractly in terms of spirit. Differences of culture affect ideas of God (Pitts, 1976; Nye & Carlson, 1984) and different belief systems give rise to different conceptual systems about God (Sternberg, 1979) which are related to the psychological needs of individuals (MacRae, 1977; Day, 1980). Investigations used, in general, questionnaires to collect data about children’s ideas about God. Harms (1944) was the rst who, arguing that children’s verbal expression did not reveal their true ideas, used pictures, drawn by children and adolescents, to probe religious understanding. He showed that up to the age of six the idea of God was one of fantasy—the fairy-tale stage; God was thought of as a king, who lived in the sky. Children between 7 and 12 were at a realistic stage; God was described using conventional symbols such as the cruci x or Jewish star or was depicted as a human gure or father helping and supervising people. Finally, in adolescence there came an individualistic stage of great diversity; some used conventional ideas, some used more original, unconventional symbolism, such as pictures of a sunrise or a light breaking through dark clouds and some depicted the imagery of religious cults quite outside their experience, similar to those from early Egypt, Persian mythology, or Chinese Bud-

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dhism. Other pictorial studies (i.e. Graebner, 1964; Williams, 1974; Pitts, 1976) followed using generally the same methodology. No evidence can be found so far linking the way children depict in their drawings religious objects, persons or ideas with the essential features that permit us to determine how the children form—in ontologically different ways—the concept of God. Aims of this Study The purpose of this study was to examine if, in the eld of religion, we could nd changes in primary school children’s representations of the ‘house where God lives’ that could be characterised, according to Thagard’s terminology, as belief revision or conceptual change. We were especially keen to investigate the existence of conceptual changes such as branch jumping and tree switching, and to compare them with evidence coming from the history of religions. Religion is a eld of knowledge that concerned all humanity during historic times. So there is a plethora of information available for comparing developmental changes during elementary school years in children and changes in humanity’s religious ideas. In a previous work (Pnevmatikos, 1993, 1995) it was found that belief about the house where God lives is strongly related to the conceptual hierarchy of the concept of God. In a questionnaire on various religious concepts and ideas, is found a strong correlation between a task involving the idea of the house that God lives in and other tasks relating to the concept of God. All these tasks were extracted in a factor analysis (orthogonal rotation) as one of the ve religious factors constructing the data. Hypothesis in Testing Our hypothesis in testing was: 1. To represent the house in which God lives children will use a small range of concepts derived from their social and/or religious environment. Pushed to do their best, they will produce pictures that are consistent with the ontological category they have in their mind for God. The underlying hypothesis in this study, as in all pictorial studies, (i.e. Goodenough, 1926; Harris, 1963) is that the children’s drawing of any object will reveal the discriminations they have made about that object as belonging to a class, i.e. as a concept. In other words, a child’s drawing of an object is an index to his/her conception of that object, that is, of his/her grasp of the essential features, which permit him/her to form a class concept, including that object as an instance. 2. We expect to nd belief revisions like addition of a new instance or a new rule in the hierarchy and conceptual changes like addition of a new concept, addition of a new part- and kind-relation or collapsing part of a kind-hierarchy as children progress from the rst to the fth grade of primary school. 3. On the other hand, we do not expect to nd changes such as branch jumping and tree switching as conceptual changes in the religious conceptual hierarchy of primary school children. 4. Conceptual changes in children will happen in a similar or analogous way to the history of religions. 5. Conceptual hierarchies in younger children will be simpler than those in older children.


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Methods Participants and Task We asked English-speaking Catholic and Greek Orthodox primary school children (n 5 132), from rst to fth grade, to draw on A4 paper their own house and the house where God lives. All the children were living in Luxembourg—far away from their own countries and traditions—and were attending the same school (the European School of Luxembourg). Both English and Greek families in this school had the opportunity to choose either their own religious tradition or moral education for their children’s religious education. So religious classes were purely Catholic or Orthodox. The task was set by the religion teacher—female for Catholics and male for Orthodox—during one teaching period (30–45 min). An attempt was made to avoid in uencing interviewees through religious status or religious attire (see Long & Long, 1976). However, the in uence of their different religious or family environments was a factor we were interested in studying. For example, the expression ‘the house of God’—as mentioned by the teachers—used for the local church is more familiar to English-speaking Catholics, while the same expression within Greek-Orthodox refers to Heaven. The Investigator asked the two religion teachers to classify the drawings of each class group on the basis of the theme of the drawing of God’s house. According this classi cation, the investigator constructed a scale of 10 different types of drawings, which was completely acceptable to the two religion teachers. This scale constituted the scale of criteria of the present study. Using this scale of criteria, the two religion teachers gave marks to all the drawings (n 5 132). Comparing the two sets of marks, the investigator detected 91% agreement, which after a discussion with the religion teachers increased to 100%.

Outcomes Presentation of Results From the collected drawings it was clear that children construct their drawings of the house where God lives based on their everyday experience coming from their social and religious environment. Ten different types of drawings were extracted. The children drew at the same level as their own house: (i) a real house, (ii) something from the historical presence of Jesus Christ such as the crib or the manager of Bethlehem and (iii) a real church beside their house; their house at the bottom of the page and at the top clouds on which there are constructions such as (iv) a real house like their own, (v) a real church and (vi) a real garden representing paradise; their house at the bottom of the page and at the top clouds on which there is, (vii) a special ethereal house made of clouds, (viii) symbolic elements (e.g. the gates of paradise, angels, etc.), (ix) planets and stars representing the universe and, in some of them, arrows showing a church on Earth and (x) nally a number of clouds labelled with some qualities attributed to God (e.g. goodness, love, peace, etc.). Table I presents the percentage of children per grade and denomination for the different types of drawings. It is clear that some of the drawings (i, ii, iii, iv) are predominant among the younger children and others (viii, ix, x) among the older children, with the former gradually giving way to the latter. Speci cally, the most frequent drawing in the total sample was a real house in the clouds (28%) and a real

Total n 5

C Orth C Orth C Orth C Orth C Orth

132

Denomination

12.50 0 0 15.38 7.14 0 0 15.38 0 13.3

Grade

1st 1st 2nd 2nd 3rd 3rd 4th 4th 5th 5th

4.50

Real house

6.00

0 33.33 0 15.38 0 16.67 0 0 0 0

Historical representation

Material on Earth

27.30

37.50 25.00 64.29 15.38 50.00 25.00 26.32 23.08 7.14 6.7

Real church

28.00

0 8.33 21.43 7.69 14.29 25.00 31.58 30.77 57.14 40

Real house in the clouds

6.00

12.50 0 7.14 0 14.29 8.33 0 0 7.14 20

Real church in the clouds

3.00

12.50 0 7.14 0 7.14 0 0 23.08 0 6.7

Paradise real garden

Material in the clouds

11.36

25.00 8.33 0 30.77 0 8.33 15.79 0 14.29 0

Ethereal house in the clouds

TABLE I. Percentages for each type of drawing per grade and denomination

9.00

0 16.67 0 7.69 0 8.33 10.53 7.69 14.29 13.3

Symbolic elements (eg. gate, angels)

3.00

0 8.33 0 7.69 0 8.33 5.26 0 0 0

Planets universe

Spiritual

1.50

0 0 0 0 0 0 10.53 0 0 0

Qualities (love peace etc.)

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FIG . 1. Fragment of a conceptual system where God is an instance of human beings. Ellipses indicate a concept and boxes indicate particular objects or subjects. Straight lines labelled ‘I’ indicate Instance-links. Curved line with arrowhead labelled ‘R’ indicates a Rule: all human beings need a house to live in. Curved lines with arrowheads labelled by ‘H’ indicate Property-links: God has a material house as a property where He lives.

church on Earth (27.30%). All the other drawings appeared in frequencies ranging from 1.50% (qualities) to 11.36% (special ethereal house). Drawings representing qualities were found only among Catholics (10.53%, 1.5% of the total), while drawings representing the historical presence of Jesus Christ only among Orthodox children (33.33% of rst, 15.38% of second and 16.67% of third graders, 6% of the total). This probably re ects an in uence from the religious background of the children and needs further investigation. All the other drawings were found in both denominations but in different percentages. Their representations, however, were limited and were derived from their social and religious environment. The results con rmed the rst hypothesis. Children’s Drawings and Conceptual Changes in the Underlying Hierarchies God Lives in Real Material Construction on the Earth. Most of the younger children drew something from the historical presence of Jesus Christ, a real house or a real church at the same level as their house. The common element among these drawings is that the children drew material constructions on Earth in some cases next door to their own house. The underlying idea is that God is like a real man who lives on Earth under the same conditions as other human beings and does not differ ontologically from human beings. We tried to present the results, according to Thagard, in a sort of hierarchy. Based on the rst three types of responses, we constructed the hierarchy presented in Fig. 1. All human beings are a kind (K) of entity. God is a particular instance (I) of human beings. All human beings need a home (R). Instances (I) of home could be a real house, a real church or other structures. God has as a property (H) a real material house, a real church, or other home structure from the past or present.

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FIG . 2. Fragment of a conceptual system where God is an instance of the part of human beings living in heaven. Ellipses indicate a concept and boxes indicate particular objects or subject. Straight lines with arrowheads labelled ‘P’ indicate Part-link relationships. Straight lines labelled ‘I’ indicate Instance-links. Curved line with arrowhead labelled ‘R’ indicates a Rule: all beings need a house to live in. Curved lines with arrowheads labelled ‘H’ indicate Property-links: God has a material house as a property where He lives.

We can note here that the only difference between the rst three types of drawings is the addition of a new instance in the hierarchy, and these additions did not replace the old network of the hierarchy, so it seems better to characterise this as belief revision. God Lives in A Real Material Construction in Heaven. The next three types of drawings, where children drew a real house, a real church or a real garden in the clouds, have in common that they are material constructions in the clouds implying that God lives somewhere in the clouds, in heaven under the same conditions as in our world. The underlying idea in this group of drawings is that God is either a human being whose soul has never been freed from his body (Jesus Christ resurrected) or is the soul of a dead human being, now living in heaven—any relationships with Vosniadou’s & Brewer’s (1987, 1990) model of dual Earth might be examined—under analogous conditions to those of real life; there is a real material house in the clouds in which God lives. In these drawings, a new concept “heaven” has been added and a new part-link arose (see Fig. 2). Beings are differentiated (Carey, 1985) into human beings living on Earth and beings living in heaven (new part-link). God now became an instance (I) of the new-part (P) of beings who are living in heaven. The same rule is retained in the hierarchy: all human beings need a home (R). Instances (I) of home could be a real house, a real church or other material structure. God has as a property (H) a real house,


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a real church, or other structure from the past or present but now all these structures are in heaven. Thagard characterises the insertion of a new part link in the hierarchy as conceptual change. Apparently, when new instances are inserted in the hierarchy such as the belief that God lives in a real church in heaven— fth (v) case—or in a real garden called paradise—sixth (vi) case—the hierarchy remains the same (belief revision). God Lives in a Special Ethereal House in Heaven. In the next cases (vii, viii and ix), where children drew houses or symbolic elements like the gates of paradise made of clouds in heaven, or angels and planets, the underlying idea is that God does not need a material house to live in. God does need, however, a particular spiritual place to live in. The real material house of the previous representations becomes a ‘spiritual’ house made of clouds. Clouds have the shape of a real house underlining that God still needs a particular place or object to live in and this does not suggest that the children are aware of the symbolic nature of God’s dwelling place. The same underlying idea might exist when the children drew planets and angels, even if it is dif cult to be positive from the pictures alone that the underlying idea is that God lives in the universe and not that the universe lives in God (pantheism). Moreover, one of the principal pantheistic views claims that everything that exists constitutes a ‘unity’ and this all-inclusive unity is in some sense divine (MacIntyre, 1967, p. 34). Furthermore, in traditions that are partly pantheistic, like some native American Indian religions, it is dif cult to discern how practices relating to pantheistic unity can be distinguished from various kinds of god and spirit worship (Levine, 1994). In other words in this case the ontology of God seems to be elevated to a spiritual being. God changes from a kind of a human soul living in heaven to a kind of spirit living in heaven. The addition of a new concept ‘spirit’ as a kind of entity dramatically changes the idea of the house that God lives in. A new concept ‘spirit’ seems to be added to the underlying hierarchy (see Fig. 3). Spirits, human beings either as beings living on earth or as souls living in heaven, are different kinds (K) of entities (see further discussion bellow). God belongs to a part (P) of spirits living in heaven and is an instance (I) of them. God might (as a spirit) have a particular spiritual place to live in. A rule (R) expresses the belief that human beings and spirits need a home, a special place to live in. Human beings have as a property (H) a real house or other structure to live in. God, as a spirit, does not have as a property a real house but lives in a special ethereal spiritual house like the other spirits. Comparing this hierarchy with the previous one, it is clear that a new kind-link is added to this hierarchy, which Thagard characterises as conceptual change. As we have seen, the introduction of the new concept ‘spirit’ affects deeply the construction of the hierarchy, inserting a new kind-link that is a conceptual change. The belief, however, that God lives in paradise (a spiritual place which receives the souls of the dead) or in ‘special’ places in heaven or on Earth, like castles or springs, does not deeply affect the construction of the hierarchy and could be characterised as belief revision. God Lives Where Good Qualities Exist. In the tenth (x) case of drawings, Catholic children drew clouds labelled with qualities like goodness, love, peace, etc. This type of drawing implies that God does not need a tangible house or a particular place to live in, but that He exists anywhere where qualities such as goodness, love, peace, etc., exist.

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FIG . 3. Fragment of a conceptual system where God is a kind of spirit. Ellipses indicate a concept and boxes indicate particular objects or subject. Straight lines labelled ‘K’ indicate Kind-link relations. Straight lines with arrowheads labelled ‘P’ indicate Part-link relationships. Straight lines labelled ‘I’ indicate Instance-links. Curved line with arrowhead labelled ‘R’ indicates a Rule: all entities need a house or a place to live in. Curved lines with arrowheads labelled by ‘H’ indicate Property-links: God has an ethereal-spiritual house as a property where He lives.

From my point of view it is irrelevant whether, by this type of drawings, children mean that God lives in these qualities or that these qualities live in God. In fact, the ontology of God remains the same. God is still a spirit identi ed with goodness, love, peace and other good qualities. The concept of God is still spiritual as before and the weight of the question shifts from the house where God lives to the manner of God’s existence. God exists in goodness, love, peace and in all good qualities. We have shifted from a special spiritual place, which is necessary for God to live in, to a purely idealistic place where God exists in goodness or peaceful circumstances. As we can see in Fig. 4, spirits and human beings are still different kinds of entities. A new parameter ‘qualities’ appeared in the hierarchy. Good and evil are kinds (K) of qualities. The appearance of this new parameter inserts a new rule (R) in the hierarchy: spirits are differentiated to good and evil. As a consequence, a new part-link (P) introduced in the hierarchy and spirits split up to two parts: good and evil. God is an instance (I) of good spirits. God has goodness as a property (H). God is still, however, a spirit, although qualitatively and morally differentiated from other spirits; He is the ultimate good. The elevation of a new part-link in the hierarchy constitutes a conceptual change. The ndings con rm our second hypothesis in its entirety. In childrens representations we found belief revisions like addition of a new instance or rule in the hierarchy and conceptual changes such as addition of a new concept, and addition of new-part


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FIG . 4. Fragment of a conceptual system where God is an instance of good spirits; Ellipses indicate a concept and boxes indicate particular objects or subject. Straight lines labelled ‘K’ indicate Kind-link relationships. Straight lines with arrowheads labelled ‘P’ indicate Part-link relations. Straight lines labelled ‘I’ indicate Instance-links. Curved line with arrowhead labelled ‘R’ indicates Rule: spirits are identi ed according to qualities they have to an absolute degree. Curved lines with arrowheads labelled ‘H’ indicate Property-links: God exists where good circumstances pertain and has as a property goodness, love, peace, etc.

and new-kind links. In other words, we found conceptual changes like branch jumping, which Thagard did not nd when reviewing conceptual changes in children in other elds of knowledge except those of Chi (1992) in physics. We did not nd conceptual changes like tree switching in our sample, which partly con rm the third hypothesis. Kinds of Conceptual Change in Children’s Drawings and in the History of Religions As we have seen, children’s drawings are based on the meaning they give to the concept of God. Although the concept of God is used by younger children, it takes on different meanings in the different hierarchies real human being (Fig. 1), a human being or its ‘soul’ living in an environment in heaven analogous the environment on Earth (Fig. 2), a spiritual being living anywhere in the universe (Fig. 3) and nally a good spirit living in a positive circumstances (Fig. 4). God is a Real Man. It is obvious that children’s representations were based on their everyday experience and re ect the Christian tradition. They hear about Jesus Christ and they refer to him as a person living somewhere on Earth. The manger in Bethlehem is his rst poor house and now he lives in another house. The new information that the ‘church is God’s house’ does not change their idea about the ontology of God, who is still a man who lives in a church. Icons showing Jesus Christ in a church probably function as his portrait, like photographs in our homes. The insertion of this new belief revises the previous one without necessarily rejecting it and does not change at all the ontology of God. In ancient Greek religion before and during the geometric ages (twelfth to tenth centuries BC) we can nd the installation and worship of local heroes who became Gods (Papachatzis, 1987). Plutarch writes about a woman called Lampsaki that Greeks

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rst elevated to hero and then decided to sacri ce to her as a god (th´ Lamya´kh pro´t« ron hrwika´ s tima´ s apodido´ nt« s, v´st« ron ws v« w ´ vv´« in « yhÁi´santo. Virtues of women, 255E). Rohde (1950) considers that, later on, it is dif cult to de ne the dividing line between heroes and gods; sometimes a local hero is called a god without any explanation. Xenophanis (DK14) considers, that Greek people believed that their gods were born mortals, and had human dress, voices and bodies. Among totemic religions, Spencer & Gillen (1888) found two or three tribes where an ancestor or a group of ancestors, under the in uence of diverse causes, became totem themselves (Durckheim, 1947). It is not easy to attribute totemic character to these drawings or to interpret these drawings as heroic religion in our days. However, the idea of God as a person from our community with the same habits and needs as us, is the underlying idea of the three types of drawing. God is the Soul of a Human Being. The concept of God took on a new meaning in the next hierachy (Fig. 2). A new piece information/belief from the Christian tradition seems to have been added to the hierarchy: ‘God lives in heaven, in a garden called paradise’. For the children everything there is still analogous to our world. Although the belief that God lives in another world seems to be used by the children, this world is analogous to our world; the difference being based on locality. It is not so clear, however, if children believe in the existence of the other reality analogous to our own and drew a real house, a church or a garden paradise or were simply unable to represent the other reality in a different way. According to the Homeric epics, human beings live two lives; one physical and visible and one as a soul in the kingdom of Hades, where they retain the general recognisable frame of the living. For Rohde (1950) this view must belong to an earlier tradition when Greeks believed in the chthonic gods. Homer kept the same ontology for his gods. Mount Olympus hosts the 12 immortal Greek gods who live under conditions analogous to those of other people on Earth, the mortals. Their immortality was derived from eating the magic food nectar and ambrosia, which allow them to live forever, and not from their different ontology (Rohde, 1950). Sometimes gods called mortals to serve them, and those mortals also had the opportunity to eat the magic food and became immortals themselves (the Nymph Leukothea Ino in Odyssey E, 333, Ganymede in Iliad Y, 233, the Orion in Odyssey E, 122 are only some of these cases mentioned by Homer in his epics). This happens because, according to ancient Greek tradition, a man whose soul does not escape from his visible hypostasis becomes a god. So, his ontology remains the same (he is human being), but he becomes a god because magic food is available in the place he lives. It seems that these descriptions from the history of religions could be related to the drawings of our data, where the children drew a real house on clouds. Analogous beliefs can be found in the beliefs of Aborigines of central Australia (see Durkheim, 1947, p. 241), who believed that when the soul leaves the body has the same needs as the body. Primals consider the act of will or of thought as functions of another person who lives inside the visible person. This other person is the one who lives after death under analogous conditions in another place. Apparently, the term soul was not used by the children, but the idea of the existence of beings living in heaven under the same conditions as in our world describes the same idea. God is an instance of a part of beings are living in heaven under the same conditions as on Earth. The addition of the new beliefs is accompanied by the addition of a new part-link


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into the hierarchy and according to Thagard (1992) this constitutes a conceptual change. God is a Spirit. The concept of God took another meaning in the third hierarchy we described (see Fig. 3). A new piece of information from Judeo-Christian tradition is added to the hierarchy: ‘God is a spirit’. The drawings depict clouds in the shape of a house or they represent in a symbolic way the gate of paradise or angels and planets. So, even if the idea of paradise is used to describe the place where God lives, paradise now becomes more spiritual than material. It is the land of spirits somewhere in heaven, the place where the spirits live and host the souls until the end of time. Spirits do not need necessarily a real house to live in; they can live anywhere in the sense that they do not have need of a real house or can move and live anywhere. They need, however, a particular and even tangible place to live. In ancient Greece, according to Homer (nineth century BC), after death the soul goes to an impervious land called Hades, where it lives in a state of unconscious remission, keeping its prior characteristics, together with the gods of Hades. Rohde (1950) considered these beliefs as a relic of ancient beliefs. Furthermore, for Rohde, even if Homer holds the idea of a soul as a second human hypostasis, he has promoted the transformation of the soul to an abstract concept of life using the term yvch´ (soul) instead of the term zwh´ (life). The transformation of some of the material forces of the internal human life to abstract concepts was a tendency of the Homeric epics (Rohde, 1950). Gods in that way became spirits. Homer collected all the local beliefs about the gods and created the Olympian pantheon. The explanatory coherence of the previously held beliefs was not suf cient for the new Greek communities. Gods then had to help and govern all the people of the known world and in order to do so they needed to move whenever they were needed. Even if the should did not participate in everyday human actions, gods as spirits acted and changed history. The need for a particular although ideal place to live is still necessary for the ancient Greek gods. A century later (eighth century BC), Hesiod in his Theogony, tells of the Silver and Golden generation as a kind of spirits, and shows that since the dawn of history until his era a kind of ancestor worship had been established, based on a living belief in the promotion of immaterial souls to conscious and active spirits (see Rohde, 1950). We can nd the same idea in the Australian religious legends where different tribes have worship to one ancestor, a great god with supremacy over the others. He is an immortal being, who after having lived on Earth for a certain time, ascended to heaven and continues to live there gathering the souls together as they arrive in the beyond (Durkheim, 1947). The great god is himself an ancestor of special importance and for Durkheim is nothing more than a civilising hero who is recognised equally by a number of neighbouring tribes. They speak to him as a sort of creator (he is a father of man), and they attribute to him a power over stars. Emile Durkheim (1947) considers that the internationalism of the tribes opened the way for the creation of the great god, which is the highest conception to which totemism has arrived. Furthermore, for the Australian Aborigines, spirits are not human beings and are more than human souls. The idea of the spirit is used to suggest constructions of another way of thinking about anonymous and diffused forces. A ‘soul is not a spirit’ (p. 273) and spirits became a kind of being that is ontologically different from souls. Drawings representing a particular but abstract spiritual place in heaven or on Earth probably re ect the idea that God is a spirit. This changes the hierarchy dramatically and

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a new kind relation is created. God becomes an instance of spirits living in heaven and as a consequence the ontology of god has been changed. This change, a branch jumping, is the biggest conceptual change we found in children’s drawings of the house that God lives in. God is a Good Spirit. The attribution of good qualities to God (Fig. 4) in some of the drawings does not seem to change the overall previous hierarchy. God ontologically remains a spirit—a good and a peaceful spirit, the ultimate good. In Homeric Greek religion spirits were not placed in different categories according to their quality-morality. The same spirits sometimes acted morally and sometimes immorally. This is the main reason why Plato ostracised Homer from his ‘Republic’. Jean Pierre Vernant (1965) considers the introduction of the theory of behaviour and morality for life as a consequence of the transformation of the Greek community from nature to the economy and civilisation of the city. Moreover, Dodds (1957) assumes the transformation of the ancient Greek shame-culture to the guilt-culture during the archaic ages (seventh to sixth centuries BC). In fact, we can nd Diarchy only in Plato ( fth to fourth centuries BC), where good and evil are two worlds in permanent con ict. In South Australia, Howwit mentions among the tribe of Dieri the belief in a good spirit called Mura-Mura, which was believed to live in trees (cited in e Durcheim, 1947). Children’s drawings representing clouds labelled with qualities imply that God is a spirit, a good spirit living in heaven. In these cases, God is ontologically like the archaic and platonic Greek gods who are simply ways of living and representations within the framework of social life, without further theoretical or metaphysical foundation, which is still unknown (Matsoukas, 1994). So, in these drawings, God ontologically remains a spirit and the underlying hierarchy remains ontologically the same, merely changed by the insertion of a new part-link in the hierarchy, which is according to Thagard a conceptual change. Children’s drawings concerning the house that God lives in represented in ontological hierarchies, which we can nd at least in the history of ancient Greek religion and the religion of Australian Aborigines. These hierarchies in the history of religions follow the order: God is a real man—hero on the earth ® God is a man or a soul who lives in heaven in conditions analogous to our world ® God is a spirit ® God is a good spirit. The ndings con rm the fth hypothesis. We will examine now if the hierarchies underlying the children’s drawings follow the same evolutionary order as the evolutions in the history of religions. Developmental Changes in Children’s Drawings of the House Where God Lives Drawings could grouped into three types based on the underlying ontology of the concept of God: (i) God is a human being living on Earth, (ii) God is a human being (the soul) living in heaven and nally (iii) God is a spiritual being and (iv), nally, God is a good spirit. Fig. 5 presents the percentages of each type of the drawings per grade. The rst type, where God is a human being living on Earth and needs a material construction on Earth to live in is predominant among rst (55%) and second (56%) graders, while it progressively falls to 3.7% among fth graders. In contrast, the second type, where God needs a material construction in heaven to live in, represents a small percentage (15%) among the rst graders and increases to 66.70% for the older


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FIG . 5. Percentages per grade and underlying ontology of God in children’s drawings.

children. The percentage of the third type remains almost the same (15–30%) for all grades. The fourth type appears only as a small percentage (6.3%) among fourth graders. This nding con rmed our fth hypothesis; as the conceptual hierarchies among younger children are found to be simpler than those among the older children. Discussion Drawings, Underlying Hierarchies and Kinds of Conceptual Change in Children’s Drawings In this study, we supposed that a conceptual system consist of concepts organised into kind-hierarchies and part-hierarchies linked to each other by rules. Children’s drawings (10 different types) were not evaluated in isolation. They were classi ed on the basis of the underlying ontology of the concept of God in the children’s conceptual system. In the children’s drawings, the ontology of God is explained in three different hierarchies; in the children’s initial conceptual framework, God is an instance of humanity; afterwards, God belongs to a part of human beings (the souls) living in another world called heaven; and nally God becomes an instance of spirits living in heaven, promoted to a good spirit existing in qualitatively-morall y positive circumstances. The passage from one hierarchy to the other would not be explained as simple accretion of a new belief added to an old one but as alterations in part-relations and kind-relations and the replacement of the entire conceptual system. Within each of these hierarchies we accepted alternative types of drawings which did not demand changes in the partor kind-relations of the children’s conceptual system. In fact, they were explained as different ‘properties’ that God has and did not affect the ontology of God. Apparently another possible type of drawing which re ects different religious or cultural traditions could be accepted within each hierarchy as belief revisions. Fig. 6 shows, in schematic form, the new part-link insertion and the branch jumping that took place when primary school children drew God’s house. Dotted lines with arrowheads represent the conceptual changes that happened in children’s drawings during primary school years. In the children’s initial conceptual framework, God is an instance of humanity. Afterwards, God belongs to a part of human beings living in another world called heaven. In the nal conceptual hierarchy, God becomes an instance of spirits living in heaven and in a small percentage of drawings God is an

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FIG . 6. Branch jumping in children’s drawings of the house where God lives. Ellipses indicate a concept and boxes indicate particular objects or subjects. Straight lines labelled ‘K’ indicate Kind-link relations. Straight lines with arrowheads labelled ‘P’ indicate Part-link relationships. Straight lines labelled ‘I’ indicate Instance-links. Curved lines with arrowheads labelled ‘H’ indicate Property-links. Dotted lines with arrowhead show the movement of the concept God and His house in the children’s hierarchy. Explosions and scribble line with an arrowhead show tree switching in the Christian religion.

instance of a part of good spirits. The re-classi cation took God from a human being, assigned Him to the part of human beings living in heaven, and raised Him to a new kind of entity: the spirits and especially the part of good spirits. The insertion of a new kind-link constitutes one of the most revolutionary changes in the hierarchy, branch jumping. Conceptual change re ects dramatic changes in the ontology of this concept. Whenever the ontology changes, it is possible for new beliefs which correspond to the new ontology to be added. Previous beliefs could: (i) change partly in order to t in the new ontology of the concept; (ii) be differentiated if they are in prima facie con ict with the new ontology; or (iii) remain active for a long time if no-one is interested in examining their explanatory coherence with the new hierarchy. Previous local beliefs, traditions or religious practices might in uence the con guration of the new belief revisions and their stability. Developmental Changes The conceptual changes described above among primary school children presented a developmental linearity. Speci cally, there was a high percentage of the type of


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children’s drawings that implied that God was a human being living on Earth among children in rst grade, and this percentage fell gradually until the fth grade, when it gave way to the type of children’s drawings that implied God was of the other world. In parallel drawings implying a spiritual God represented a small percentage among children of primary school age. This data may hold important implications (see Duke, 1994) for the fuller understanding of conceptual change, and it needs further investigation. Conceptual Changes in Children and in Conceptual Revolutions in the History of Religions The conceptual changes we have described above are analogous to changes that occurred in the history of religions. Conceptual revolutions in ancient Greek religion (for Australian Aboriginal religion we do not have information available concerning their chronological appearance) followed the same order as in our data. In particular, the heroes—Gods of the geometric period in ancient Greece (twelfth to tenth century BC) gradually transformed into immortal, but anthropophyes gods (anJ rwpo;Ánh´ s for Herodotus; see also Harrison, 1912) i.e. ‘having the human growth or nature’—and not anthropomorphic, i.e. ‘having the human form or shape’ as they are usually called— relics of which we nd in Homeric epics. Homer (ninth century BC) in his epics and Hesiod in his Theogony (eighth century BC) tried to describe the transformation of the immortal souls into conscious and active spirits. Diarchy and moral qualities were attributed to gods later on, during the fth to fourth century BC by Platonic philosophy and elsewhere. So, conceptual changes in children are analogous to those which occurred not only in the history of science, as other researchers have shown (see Thagard, 1992 for review), but in the history of religions as well. Furthermore, in the religious conceptual system of primary school children we found one of the most important conceptual changes, branch jumping, which Thagard (1992) did not nd among investigations in other elds of knowledge, except for the evidence coming from physics (Chi, 1992). The concept of God as either a human being or a soul or spirit is used as a kind of creature (see Fig. 6). In Christian theology, however, the concept of God took on a fundamentally different meaning since the classi cation of entities into human beings, spirits and God is based on ontology. God is ontologically different from cosmos. God is not an ancestor, not the soul of an ancestor, nor a spirit—even a good one—with an independent existence and has nothing to do with any kind of creation. This alteration of the fundamental nature of the kind-relation is the most revolutionary conceptual change in the history of religions since demands a tree switching in the hierarchy and we did not nd it among our sample. We expect, however, that could be found among older children or adults. Some Implication for Religious Education If children, in order to understand complex religious systems and their theology, need to go through the same kind of conceptual changes undergone by the people who contributed to the con guration of this system of beliefs, what might be the appropriate religious curriculum for children in schools? It is obviously dif cult to draw conclusions concerning all the parameters that play a part in framing an appropriate religious curriculum. However, it is clear from this paper that the presentation of religious concepts might be compatible with and follow

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the sequence of the knowledge acquisition of children, which follows the history of the development of religions. Acquiring nodes and links by instruction is easier than acquiring them by discovery. New religious concepts can be arrived at through verbal communication. However, feeding religious concepts, into someone’s head is less important than developing this information in an organised way that can be applied in various everyday situations. Teachers must rst, through instruction and practice, build up in pupils an integrated set of concepts and rules, and then through argument, lead them to see its explanatory coherence. The crucial point here is that the new conceptual system must be built up largely on its own and its replacement of the old is the result of a global judgement of explanatory coherence. Furthermore, teachers can ensure that pupils become aware of how religious systems that they have or should have outgrown con ict with what they are being taught in school. At the same time, religious curricula might develop the metacognitive skills of the pupils by explaining to them that their primal beliefs about the main religious concepts do not refer to real beings, but are theoretical or empirical constructions approaching the ultimate and absolute, analogous to those dawn of history. Of course, the deeper essence (onsiá) of God, cannot be approached by human beings because of their different ontology; all attempts to explain the essence of God are human constructions and no-one of them can exhaust His nature (see also McFague, 1983). According to the fathers of Christianity, what we can approach is only His holy actions. Teachers might encourage pupils to promote their primal beliefs and ideas to the higher level of ‘knowing’ the ontology and nature of God, and turn their interest to the God’s actions in order to establish in pupils a minimum of religious experience (see Pnevmatikos, 2000) that is the sense of God’s presence in our world.

Correspondence: Dr Dimitris Pnevmatikos, 29C, Kolokotroni St, GR - 57001 Thermi Thessaloniki, Greece e-mail: [email protected]

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