In praise of "the little girl in the garden"

Develomental psychologist Alison Gopnik tells New Scientist that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass changed her life:

For children, theorising and imagining are intense activities: they spend every minute learning and pretending. Charles Dodgson, shy Oxford don and mathematical logician, and Lewis Carroll, wild, uninhibited master of nonsense and imagination, were united in the little girl in the garden.

I think every scientist and every child is the grave, wide-eyed little girl who fearlessly follows evidence and logic wherever it leads –- even through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole.