Piaget Quotes

The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered.

Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do.

What we see changes what we know. What we know changes what we see.

Each time one prematurely teaches a child something he could have discovered himself, that child is kept from inventing it and consequently from understanding it completely.

Play is the answer to how anything new comes about.

I could not think without writing.

Say me aye," he whispered against her mouth. "Say me aye." How could she say anything else?

Every response, whether it be an act directed towards the outside world or an act internalized as thought, takes the form of an adaptation or, better, of a re-adaptation.

Play is the work of childhood.

if one accepts Jean Piaget’s famous definition of mature intelligence as the ability to coordinate between multiple perspectives (or possible perspectives) one can see, here, precisely how bureaucratic power, at the moment it turns to violence, becomes literally a form of infantile stupidity.

Logic is the mirror of thought, and not vice versa;in classes, relations et nombres; essai sur les groupements de logistique et la réversibilitié de lq pensée

The individual acts only if he experiences a need, i.e., if the equilibrium between the environment and the organism is momentarily upset, and action tends to re-establish the equilibrium, i.e., to re-adapt the organism (Claparède).

Every structure is to be thought of as a particular form of equilibrium, more or less stable within its restricted field and losing its stability on reaching the limits of the field.

If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society.

Children should be able to do their own experimenting and their own research. Teachers, of course, can guide them by providing appropriate materials, but the essential thing is that in order for a child to understand something, he must construct it himself, he must re-invent it. Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it himself. On the other hand that which we allow him to discover by himself will remain with him visibly for the rest of his life.

intelligence, the most plastic and at the same time the most durable structural equilibrium of behaviour, is essentially a system of living and acting operations.

He stopped and looked at her. "Your eyes are leaking." "It's the flowers. They make me sneeze." "Then let us be away from the garden. Open the door, love, if you will." She obeyed, then froze halfway over the threshold. "What did you call me?" "The first of countless endearments if you'll but stir yourself to hold our current course.

You may weep more if you wish it," he announced, feeling exceedingly generous.

to avoid the difficulties of teleological language, adaptation must be described as an equilibrium between the action of the organism on the environment and vice versa.

Every psychological explanation comes sooner or later to lean either on biology or on logic (or on sociology, but this in turn leads to the same alternatives).

We shall simply say then that every action involves an energetic or affective aspect and a structural or cognitive aspect, which, in fact, unites the different points of view already mentioned.

According to Claparède, feelings appoint a goal for behaviour, while intelligence merely provides the means (the "technique"). But there exists an awareness of ends as well as of means, and this continually modifies the goals of action.

theory or have remained unaffected by them. It is true that a fact can sometimes appear to resemble an “accident,” as in the case of the apple that fell near Newton, but the accident only became a “fact” because Newton asked certain questions.

Nel, after throwing a stone onto a sloping bank watching the stone rolling said, 'Look at the stone. It's afraid of the grass

Piaget’s work shows that our concepts of logic, space, time, number, quantity, etc., are not given readymade as Kant thought, but undergo a process of development.

How could a woman who was that beautiful, who smelled that good, who had such perfectly lovely teeth and bright eyes, be so thoroughly, completely, entirely, stark raving mad?" ~ Robert Cameron

The child psychologist Jean Piaget saw conflict as a critical part of mental development. Through battles with peers and then parents, children learn to adapt to the world and develop strategies for dealing with problems. Those children who seek to avoid conflict at all cost, or those who have overprotective parents, end up handicapped socially and mentally. The same is true of adults: it is through your battles with others that you learn what works, what doesn’t, and how to protect yourself. Instead of shrinking from the idea of having enemies, then, embrace it. Conflict is therapeutic.

When Jean Piaget lectured in the United States, he was frequently asked whether the rate at which children attained his cognitive stages could be accelerated—in other words, whether you could train your child to be "ahead" of other children. Piaget was bewildered by the question. In his view of development, being "ahead" or "behind" anyone else was meaningless. But he got the question often enough that he came to associate it with a particular worldview: he called it "the American Question.

At what age in a child’s life does rage become sorrow? I dont know. I dont think Piaget addresses the question. Or why. I think I know why. The injustice over which they are so distraught is irremediable. And rage is only for what you believe can be fixed. All the rest is grief. At some point they get this.

A while back, my friend Graydon Carter mentioned that he was opening a restaurant in New York. I cautioned him against this, because it’s my theory that owning a restaurant is the kind of universal fantasy everyone ought to grow out of, sooner rather than later, or else you will be stuck with the restaurant. There are many problems that come with owning a restaurant, not the least of which is that you have to eat there all the time. Giving up the fantasy that you want to own a restaurant is probably the last Piaget stage.

A fact is first an answer to a question. If Sartre had consulted psychologists before judging them in the light of his own genius, he would have learned that they do not wait on the accident but begin by setting themselves problems.

I know some very intelligent philosophers, not at all dogmatic, who believe that “science” cannot introduce the concept of finality in the analysis and explanation of vital processes, but that “philosophy” equally cannot arrive at an adequate concept of organic life without introducing finality. It is not a question here of moral or other values, but rather of a concept peculiar to philosophical biology as opposed to biology. Indeed, one such philosopher concluded, drawing inspiration from Merleau-Ponty, that science can “never” give an adequate explanation of the concept of the “whole structure” of the organism.

A man does not come at what is mine, harm it, and walk away unscathed.

Knowledge is not predetermined by heredity; it is not predetermined in the things around us - in knowing things around him the subject always adds to them.

So we must start from this dual nature of intelligence as something both biological and logical.

Intelligence is what you use when you don’t know what to do." Jean Piaget

The work of both Piaget and Kinsey suggests that while biology is always a dominant influence on behavior, environment is critical to its expression. Even

As Jean Piaget studied children, he discovered that they were moral philosophers who struggled with good and evil, understanding and applying rules.

Piaget has helped teachers of young children to see how important it is for children to experience whatever we want them to learn about.

But if all behaviour, without exception, thus implies an energetics or an "economy", forming its affective aspect, the interaction with the environment which it instigates likewise requires a form or structure to determine the various possible circuits between subject and object.

There are some people men and women both who will never be happy no matter what the circumstances they find themselves. There's not enough money, no Castle grand enough, no life easy enough to content them.

Anthropologist and teacher Margaret Mead said in Redbook magazine in 1963, “If one cannot state a matter clearly enough so that an intelligent twelve-year-old can understand it, one should remain within the cloistered walls of the University and laboratory until one gets a better grasp of one’s subject matter.

We shall adopt an analogous formula, with the reservation that feelings and cognitive configurations do not depend solely on the existing "field," but also on the whole previous history of the acting subject.

Piaget is also concerned with attempts of Maine de Biran, Bergson, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty to construct a philosophical psychology as opposed to a scientific empirical psychology. He believes that the difference between philosophical psychology and scientific psychology lies neither in the fact that the former concerns itself with “essences” (Husserl), with “irrationality” (Sartre), nor in its use of introspection. He sees the difference as being one rather of method: philosophical psychology neglects objective verification and grounds itself in subjectivity, although claiming to arrive at objective knowledge through intuition.

If one cannot state a matter clearly enough so that an intelligent twelve-year-old can understand it, one should remain within the cloistered walls of the University and laboratory until one gets a better grasp of one’s subject matter.

A response is thus a particular case of interaction between the external world and the subject, but unlike physiological interactions, which are of a material nature and involve an internal change in the bodies which are present, the responses studied by psychology are of a functional nature and are achieved at greater and greater distances in space (perception, etc.) and in time (memory, etc.) besides following more and more complex paths (reversals, detours, etc.).

Do you as a writer expand the meanings of words, or are you merely their tool? Is your own language programming you like a computer, or are you wielding it like Prospero’s magic charms, and is there in fact a difference? Small children, when asked by Jean Piaget what part of their body they thought with, said, “My mouth”. Is thought possible without words? Do words determine what we can think, and if so, can we think some thoughts in one language that are impossible to articulate in another? (Translationland)

Kohlberg’s most influential finding was that the most morally advanced kids (according to his scoring technique) were those who had frequent opportunities for role taking—for putting themselves into another person’s shoes and looking at a problem from that person’s perspective. Egalitarian relationships (such as with peers) invite role taking, but hierarchical relationships (such as with teachers and parents) do not. It’s really hard for a child to see things from the teacher’s point of view, because the child has never been a teacher. Piaget and Kohlberg both thought that parents and other authorities were obstacles to moral development. If you want your kids to learn about the physical world, let them play with cups and water; don’t lecture them about the conservation of volume. And if you want your kids to learn about the social world, let them play with other kids and resolve disputes; don’t lecture them about the Ten Commandments. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t force them to obey God or their teachers or you. That will only freeze them at the conventional level.

I can’t tell you how nice it is to hear someone talking like the voices in my head,” Abigail said, linking arms with Jessica and heading toward the battlement door. “You’ll have to come visit—a lot. Miles will love it.” “Did you tell him about me?” “He guessed.” “He didn’t!” “Not much gets past the man.

It is important to recall at the outset that by a cognitive equilibrium (which is analogous to the stability of a living organism) we mean something quite different from mechanical equilibrium (a state of rest resulting from a balance between antagonistic forces) or thermodynamic equilibrium (rest with destruction of structures). Cognitive equilibrium is more like what Glansdorff and Prigogine call ‘dynamic states’; these are stationary but are involved in exchanges that tend to ‘build and maintain functional and structural order in open systems’ far from the zone of thermodynamic equilibrium” (Piaget, 1977/2001, pp. 312–313).

Psychology, in fact, repre- sents the juncture of two opposite directions of are still insufficient. In the science of human be- scientific thought that are dialectically comple- mentary. It follows that the system of sciences cannot be arranged in a linear order, as many people beginning with Auguste Comte have at- tempted to arrange them.

in the same sense in which Kant held that the empirical sciences depend on some mental abilities – intuition and categories

The more I see you,” he said quietly, “the more I want you.

Have you never done anything dangerous, my lady?” “I’ve kept library books past their due dates,” she said defensively. “I’ve walked on the wild side.

Twenty-four years of sneaking cola drinks for breakfast had finally taken its toll, and she had been tossed into sugar-induced hallucination.

But she had no hard cash. Not even a tissue in case she became hysterical.

He threw open the shutters and was silent. “There,” he said, pointing to a shooting star. “Wish to stay together. Hurry.” She watched the star’s arc fade and wished, secure in her love’s embrace. “I wish that we’ll be together forever,” she whispered. He pressed his lips against her ear. “I wish that we’ll be together forever,” he echoed. “Now it can’t help but come to pass.

Formal logic, or logistics, is simply the axiomatics of states of equilibrium of thought, and the positive science corresponding to this axiomatics is none other than the psychology of thought.

At some very low level, we all share certain fictions about time, and they testify to the continuity of what is called human nature, however conscious some, as against others, may become of the fictive quality of these fictions. It seems to follow that we shall learn more concerning the sense-making paradigms, relative to time, from experimental psychologists than from scientists or philosophers, and more from St. Augustine than from Kant or Einstein because St. Augustine studies time as the soul's necessary self-extension before and after the critical moment upon which he reflects. We shall learn more from Piaget, from studies of such disorders as déjà vu, eidetic imagery, the Korsakoff syndrome, than from the learned investigators of time's arrow, or, on the other hand, from the mythic archetypes. Let us take a very simple example, the ticking of a clock. We ask what it says: and we agree that it says tick-tock. By this fiction we humanize it, make it talk our language. Of course, it is we who provide the fictional difference between the two sounds; tick is our word for a physical beginning, tock our word for an end. We say they differ. What enables them to be different is a special kind of middle. We can perceive a duration only when it is organized. It can be shown by experiment that subjects who listen to rhythmic structures such as tick-tock, repeated identically, 'can reproduce the intervals within the structure accurately, but they cannot grasp spontaneously the interval between the rhythmic groups,' that is, between tock and tick, even when this remains constant. The first interval is organized and limited, the second not. According to Paul Fraisse the tock-tick gap is analogous to the role of the 'ground' in spatial perception; each is characterized by a lack of form, against which the illusory organizations of shape and rhythm are perceived in the spatial or temporal object. The fact that we call the second of the two related sounds tock is evidence that we use fictions to enable the end to confer organization and form on the temporal structure. The interval between the two sounds, between tick and tock is now charged with significant duration. The clock's tick-tock I take to be a model of what we call a plot, an organization that humanizes time by giving it form; and the interval between tock and tick represents purely successive, disorganized time of the sort that we need to humanize. Later I shall be asking whether, when tick-tock seems altogether too easily fictional, we do not produce plots containing a good deal of tock-tick; such a plot is that of Ulysses.

According to Piaget, the best strategy for preschool curriculum is to keep children curious, make them wonder, and offer them real problem-solving challenges, rather than give them information. Many adults still hold the notion that a teacher is someone who shares information. Using Piaget’s theory about children’s learning requires changing the image of teacher into someone who nurtures inquiry and supports the children’s own search for answers.

a baby’s failure to reach for an object hidden under a blanket does not support the rather dramatic conclusion that the baby thinks the object has ceased to exist. Perhaps he simply does not yet have sufficient hand-arm coordination to reach for a hidden object. In fact, we now know that this explanation is correct. Recent experiments, more sophisticated than Piaget’s, indicate that even very young babies have a well-developed sense of object permanency.

But these structures, forming different levels, are to be regarded as succeeding one another according to a law of development, such that each one brings about a more inclusive and stable equilibrium for the processes that emerge from the preceding level.

Kendrick walked over to her purposefully, hauled her up into his arms and gave her a mock frown. "I hunger, wench." Genevieve put her arms around his neck. "Well? What are you going to hunt us for dinner?" "I'll slay a few steaks from the freezer." "You're so brave.

Thus arises the solution proposed by the so-called Gestalt psychology: behaviour involves a "total field" embracing subject and objects, and the dynamics of this field constitutes feeling (Lewin), while its structure depends on perception, effector-functions, and intelligence.

Intelligence exhibited by human beings originates and perpetuates itself “neither with knowledge of the self nor of things as such but with knowledge of their interaction, and it is by orienting itself simultaneously toward the two poles of that interaction that intelligence organizes the world by organizing itself” (CR, pp. 354–355).

The fundamental problem with learning mathematics is that while the number sense may be genetic, exact calculation requires cultural tools—symbols and algorithms—that have been around for only a few thousand years and must therefore be absorbed by areas of the brain that evolved for other purposes. The process is made easier when what we are learning harmonizes with built-in circuitry. If we can’t change the architecture of our brains, we can at least adapt our teaching methods to the constraints it imposes. For nearly three decades, American educators have pushed “reform math,” in which children are encouraged to explore their own ways of solving problems. Before reform math, there was the “new math,” now widely thought to have been an educational disaster. (In France, it was called les maths modernes and is similarly despised.) The new math was grounded in the theories of the influential Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who believed that children are born without any sense of number and only gradually build up the concept in a series of developmental stages. Piaget thought that children, until the age of four or five, cannot grasp the simple principle that moving objects around does not affect how many of them there are, and that there was therefore no point in trying to teach them arithmetic before the age of six or seven.

He leaned over and gently kissed her cheek. Jessica smacked her lips, snorted a time or two, then dropped back off to sleep. “I love you,” Richard whispered. “Sweet Jessie, I do.” Only soft snores answered him. Richard smiled. He wished Jessica had been awake to see it, for he was certain it was a smile that would have pleased even her. More than just the corners of his mouth had joined in. He laid his head down next to hers and stared at her. He would sleep later. Now he would look his fill and see if he couldn’t identify that expanding feeling in his chest that brought tears to his eyes. Could it be joy? He’d ask Jessica when she woke. After all, she knew all about it.

According to Claparède, feelings appoint a goal for behaviour, while intelligence merely provides the means (the "technique"). But there exists an awareness of ends as well as of means, and this continually modifies the goals of action. In so far as feeling directs behaviour by attributing a value to its ends, we must confine ourselves to saying that it supplies the energy necessary for action, while knowledge impresses a structure on it. Thus arises the solution proposed by the so-called Gestalt psychology: behaviour involves a "total field" embracing subject and objects, and the dynamics of this field constitutes feeling (Lewin), while its structure depends on perception, effector-functions, and intelligence.

For some writers mental phenomena become intelligible only when related to the organism. This view is of course inescapable when we study the elementary functions (perception, motor functions, etc.) in which intelligence originates. But we can hardly see neurology explaining why 2 and 2 make 4, or why the laws of deduction are forced on the mind of necessity.

As iAm cracked the door to his brother’s room, the poor bastard’s suffering stained the very air, making it hard to breathe—and even see properly. Then again, everything was dark by design. “Trez?” The moaned answer was nothing good, a combination of wounded animal and sore throat from throwing up. iAm lifted his wrist into the light streaming in from behind and cursed at his Piaget. By this time, the SOB should have been solidly in recovery, his body digging itself out of the headache hole that had swallowed him. Not the case. “You want something for your stomach?” Mumble, mumble, groan, mumble? “Okay, I’m sure they’ve got some.” Mumble, moan, moan. Mutter, mutter. “Yeah, that, too. You want some Milanos?” Mmmmmmmmmoan. “Roger that.

If Jessica had been pleased with his work, that was enough. He had bent to his work and poured his entire soul, black as it might have been, into fashioning something beautiful for his lady. His lady. He could no longer think of her as anything else. And that was the thought that left him standing in the lists, useless and fair blinded by the thought of his poor heart being so exposed.

Come,” he said, holding out his hand for her. She shook her head. Richard paused, then frowned. “I said, come.” “And I said, no.” He frowned again. “The cold has numbed your thinking, lady. ’Tis your duty to obey me.” “I’m not your trained dog to come when you call.” “You forget your place.” “My place, buster, is not at your feet, licking your boots!” “There are many who would beg for the chance to do just that!

Elizabeth," Jamie began gruffly, "there is aught I would speak of with you." She lifted an eyebrow at his lordly tone. "Go ahead." "It may take me a few hours to accustom myself to these possible future ways, but that does not mean I am weak or stupid." Hours? She smiled. "I know that Jamie." "Nor does that mean I have ceased being your lord. You will obey me in all things, as always." "Of course, Jamie," she said meekly. "And should you demand knowledge about this or that, I would give it to you because you required it, not because I thought you didn't know the answer already." "Of course,"Jamie said arrogantly. "There would be no other reason to question you." Elizabeth suppressed her smile and was thankful that she was riding behind him so he didn't see the twinkle in her eyes. Heavens what an ego her husband had.

This new philosophical psychology can in this respect be traced back to Maine de Biran, for even if in his time scientific psychology was unaware of its autonomy, and even if Biranian psychology was only critical of that of the empiricists, Biran believed in the Kantian distinction of noumena and phenomena and took care to limit his inquiry to the latter alone, which did not prevent him from extending it in the form of idealist speculations.

Richard opened the door, then stood back. “After you, my lady.” Jessica walked into the room and gasped. She turned around and around, trying to take in the entire view. He had painted the bedroom walls. Talk about an unobstructed ocean view. It was more magnificent than she ever could have imagined. She laughed and threw herself at him. “You’re amazing,” she said breathlessly. “It’s beautiful!” “Nay,” he said, shutting the door and bolting it. “You are the beautiful one.

Children should be able to do their own experimenting and their own research. Teachers, of course, can guide them by providing appropriate materials, but the essential thing is that in order for a child to understand something, he must construct it himself, he must re-invent it. Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it himself. On the other hand that which we allow him to discover by himself will remain with him visibly [...] for all the rest of his life.

We have seen already in the first chapter how one such model—the developmental, pioneered by child psychologist Jean Piaget—helps explain the roots of our unconscious emotional programs for happiness. Each of us needs to be reassured and affirmed in his or her own personhood and self-identity. If this assurance is withheld because of lack of concern or commitment on the part of parents, these painful privations will require defensive or compensatory measures. As a consequence, our emotional life ceases to grow in relation to the unfolding values of human development and becomes fixated at the level of the perceived deprivation. The emotional fixation fossilizes into a program for happiness. When fully formed it develops into a center of gravity, which attracts to itself more and more of our psychological resources: thoughts, feelings, images, reactions, and behavior. Later experiences and events in life are all sucked into its gravitational field and interpreted as helpful or harmful in terms of our basic drive for happiness. These centers, as we shall see, are reinforced by the culture in which we live and the particular group with which we identify, or rather, overidentify.

I love you,” she said. “What brought that on?” She smiled. “It’s like a fever. It comes and goes. I think your smiles bring it on.” “Then remind me to give you more of them.” She rested her head against his chest and couldn’t help but marvel over how changed he was. He soaked up every expression of love she gave him. She watched him as he listened to her laugh or watched her smile. It broke her heart a little to see how hungry he was for such simple things, so she did her best to give them to him in abundance. She’d been repaid a hundredfold just by seeing his own smile and hearing his laugh.

She smiled. “You’re very sweet.” “Now you go too far—” She shoved her hand under his nose. “This is your ring you see, my lord, and that gives me the right to tell you to be quiet. So, be quiet. I’ll probably be back to thinking you’re a jerk tomorrow, so live with the compliment while it’s still in force. Got it?” He grumbled something she didn’t catch. But then, to her utter surprise, he brought her hand to his lips and kissed it in a rough, Richardy kind of way. Then he dropped it as if it had been a hot potato, set her on her feet, then leaned his head back against the chair and pretended to snore. Jessica went to bed with a smile on her face.

Eventually, after listening to a good deal of grumbling and muttering, Jessica felt the bed dip. A calloused hand reached for hers. “It is late?” she asked. “Late enough.” “Hold me?” How gentle were those powerful arms as they gathered her close. Jessica pressed her face against Richard’s neck and sighed at the pleasure of the warmth. His hint of a beard was rough against her forehead but she didn’t mind that either. She put her hands on the hard wall of his chest and let the heat of his body seep into hers. Richard’s hand trembled as he brushed her hair back from her face and she knew it was because he was trying to be gentle. She snuggled closer to him and felt herself drifting off to sleep.

Every observer has noted that the younger the child, the less sense he has of his own ego. From the intellectual point of view, he does not distinguish between external and internal, subjective and objective. From the point of view of action, he yields to every suggestion, and if he does oppose to other people's wills — a certain negativism which has been called "the spirit of contradiction" — this only points to his real defenselessness against his surroundings. A strong personality can maintain itself without the help of this particular weapon. The adult and the older child have complete power over him. They impose their opinions and their wishes, and the child accepts them without knowing that he does so.

En honorant l'école à l'excès, c'est toi [l'élève excellent] que tu flattes en douce, tu te poses plus ou moins consciemment en élève idéal. Ce faisant, tu masques les innombrables paramètres qui nous font tellement inégaux dans l'acquisition du savoir : circonstances, entourage, pathologies, tempérament… Ah ! l'énigme du tempérament ! « Je dois tout à l'école de la République ! » Serait-ce que tu voudrais faire passer tes aptitudes pour des vertus ? (Les unes et les autres n'étant d'ailleurs pas incompatibles…) Réduire ta réussite à une question de volonté, de ténacité, de sacrifice, c'est ça que tu veux ? Il est vrai que tu fus un élève travailleur et persévérant, et que le mérite t'en revient, mais c'est, aussi, pour avoir joui très tôt de ton aptitude à comprendre, éprouvé dès tes premières conforntations au travail scolaire la joie immense d'avoir compris, et que l'effort portait en lui-même la promesse de cette joie ! À l'heure où je m'asseyais à ma table écrasé par la conviction de mon idiotie, tu t'installais à la tienne vibrant d'impatience, impatience de passer à autre chose aussi, car ce problème de math sur lequel je m'endormais tu l'expédiais, toi, en un tournemain. Nos devoirs, qui étaient les tremplins de ton esprit, étaient les sables mouvants où s'enlisait le mien. Ils te laissaient libre comme l'air, avec la satisfaction du devoir accompli, et moi hébété d'ignorance, maquillant un vague brouillon en copie définitive, à grand renfort de traits soigneusement tirés qui ne trompaient personne. À l'arrivée, tu étais le travailleur, j'étais le paresseux. C'était donc ça, la paresse ? Cet enlisement en soi-même ? Et le travail, qu'était-ce donc ? Comment s'y prenaient-ils, ceux qui travaillaient bien ? Où puisaient-ils cette force ? Ce fut l'énigme de mon enfance. L'effort, où je m'anéantissais, te fut d'entrée de jeu un gage d'épanouissement. Nous ignorions toi et moi qu'« il faut réussir pour comprendre », selon le mot si clair de Piaget, et que nous étions, toi comme moi, la vivante illustration de cet axiome. (p. 271-272)

Now to picture the mechanism of this process of construction and not merely its progressive extension, we must note that each level is characterized by a new co-ordination of the elements provided—already existing in the form of wholes, though of a lower order—by the processes of the previous level. The sensori-motor schema, the characteristic unit of the system of pre-symbolic intelligence, thus assimilates perceptual schemata and the schemata relating to learned action (these schemata of perception and habit being of the same lower order, since the first concerns the present state of the object and the second only elementary changes of state). The symbolic schema assimilates sensori-motor schemata with differentiation of function; imitative accommodation is extended into imaginal significants and assimilation determines the significates. The intuitive schema is both a co-ordination and a differentiation of imaginal schemata. The concrete operational schema is a grouping of intuitive schemata, which are promoted, by the very fact of their being grouped, to the rank of reversible operations. Finally, the formal schema is simply a system of second-degree operations, and therefore a grouping operating on concrete groupings. Each of the transitions from one of these levels to the next is therefore characterized both by a new co-ordination and by a differentiation of the systems constituting the unit of the preceding level. Now these successive differentiations, in their turn, throw light on the undifferentiated nature of the initial mechanisms, and thus we can conceive both of a genealogy of operational groupings as progressive differentiations, and of an explanation of the pre-operational levels as a failure to differentiate the processes involved. Thus, as we have seen (Chap. 4), sensori-motor intelligence arrives at a kind of empirical grouping of bodily movements, characterized psychologically by actions capable of reversals and detours, and geometrically by what Poincaré called the (experimental) group of displacement. But it goes without saying that, at this elementary level, which precedes all thought, we cannot regard this grouping as an operational system, since it is a system of responses actually effected; the fact is therefore that it is undifferentiated, the displacements in question being at the same time and in every case responses directed towards a goal serving some practical purpose. We might therefore say that at this level spatio-temporal, logico-arithmetical and practical (means and ends) groupings form a global whole and that, in the absence of differentiation, this complex system is incapable of constituting an operational mechanism. At the end of this period and at the beginning of representative thought, on the other hand, the appearance of the symbol makes possible the first form of differentiation: practical groupings (means and ends) on the one hand, and representation on the other. But this latter is still undifferentiated, logico-arithmetical operations not being distinguished from spatio-temporal operations. In fact, at the intuitive level there are no genuine classes or relations because both are still spatial collections as well as spatio-temporal relationships: hence their intuitive and pre-operational character. At 7–8 years, however, the appearance of operational groupings is characterized precisely by a clear differentiation between logico-arithmetical operations that have become independent (classes, relations and despatialized numbers) and spatio-temporal or infra-logical operations. Lastly, the level of formal operations marks a final differentiation between operations tied to real action and hypothetico-deductive operations concerning pure implications from propositions stated as postulates.

She didn’t turn around. She put her foot on the bottom step, then felt herself being whirled around. She shrieked as her world tilted. Richard’s shoulder in her stomach robbed her of any air and her forehead bumping against his lower back made her slightly sick. It was Archie’s hoisting trick all over again, only Richard seemed to be more adept at taking circular stairs. She thought she just might barf. “Put me down, you jerk!” she gasped. He ignored her. She saw, grudgingly, how he might have become a little annoyed by the practice. He slammed the bedroom door behind them and dumped her to her feet. He took her by the arms and held her immobile. She had the feeling that he wanted to shake her. His hands were trembling. “I am finished with your silence,” he bellowed. “Damn you, woman, speak!” “Fine,” she snapped, jerking away from him. “I’ve had a bellyful of you, too, buddy. I’m not your servant, I’m not your squire, and I’m not your damned horse to just take orders and swallow them. I’m sick to death of being treated like a second-class citizen. I’m just as smart as you are and I’ve had it with you treating me like I’m not!” He blinked. “Of course you aren’t. You’re a wo—” “Don’t say it,” she said, through gritted teeth. “If you tell me one more time that I’m inferior to you because I’m a woman, I’m going to haul off and deck you!” “Deck me?” he echoed. “Take my fist and slam it into your face!” Richard took a step back and folded his arms over his chest. “You’re powerfully outspoken. Are all the maids so in your time?

For someone who constantly comes across this problem in the course of his professional activities, the question whether philosophy has the status of a “wisdom” or of a form of “knowledge” peculiar to itself is no longer an unnecessary or simply a theoretical problem; it is a vital question, since it affects the success or failure of thousands of scholars.

Social contexts provide ubiquitous cases of the same point: If one bottle of beer costs £1, six individual bottles may cost £6, whereas a six-pack costs £5.

This raises the question of the role of Kantianism in Piaget's thinking. In the many discussions about this problem with one of us, Piaget denied any influence “except, maybe, a very indirect one…something like what Boring would have called the Zeitgeist and we all know that the Zeitgeist is everywhere, that is nowhere” (personal communication). We know of another example, however, where Piaget tends to cover his tracks carefully (see Piaget, 1982).

the main problem of any epistemology is in fact to understand how the mind succeeds in constructing necessary relationships, which appear to be independent of time, if the instruments of thought are merely psychological operations that are subject to evolution and are constituted in time (Piaget, 1950, p. 23);

This law of equilibrium, Piaget repeats, is not something external, imposed upon intellectual change from without; it is not a transcendent, Platonic principle. On the contrary, much like Kant's notion of the moral law, which is not internal to the individual, the law of equilibration is an immanent principle in experience (Piaget, 1977/1995, pp. 94, 154, 190, 216, 227, 243). Such a concept of the immanent versus the

Jackson, I. (1987). On situating Piaget’s subject: A triangulation based on Kant, structuralism, and biology. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 17, 471–486.

Kant argued that our intuition (i.e., sensibility) and understanding use a priori (i.e., independent of all experience) forms and categories, which are the condition of the possibility for experiencing objectivity. Piaget subscribed to the ordering and organizing function of the mind, but he believed that the forms and categories are not a priori but undergo development as a result of the subject's interaction with the world (OI, pp. 376–395).

Empiricism is not just an empirical method but also a theory of experience. Essentially, it conceives of human beings as passive and sense perception as providing replicas or copies of reality that are based on association. As key proponents of empiricism, Piaget identified Hume, Locke, and behaviorist stimulus-response theories, but he also thought that empiricism is trenchant in psychology (and, one might add, even today, see Müller & Giesbrecht, 2008). According to Piaget, empiricists misconstrue the fundamentally active relation between infant and environment as a passive, causal relation: “Even before language begins, the young infant reacts to objects not by a mechanical set of stimulus-response associations but by an integrative assimilation to schemes of action, which impress a direction on his activities and include the satisfaction of a need or an interest” (Piaget, 1965/1971, p. 131; see also OI, p. 411). Furthermore, Piaget (1970) rejected the idea that knowledge is a copy of reality. Rather, he was influenced by Kant's (1787/1929) idea that objectivity is constituted by the subject (see Chapter 3, this volume). Kant argued that our intuition (i.e., sensibility) and understanding use a priori (i.e., independent of all experience) forms and categories, which are the condition of the possibility for experiencing objectivity. Piaget subscribed to the ordering and organizing function of the mind, but he believed that the forms and categories are not a priori but undergo development as a result of the subject's interaction with the world (OI, pp. 376–395).

Kant argued that the mind has both receptive capacities and spontaneous capabilities, both operative in human knowledge. For Kant (1787/1933, B74, B93), knowledge has its origin in sensory capacities to receive representations and in intellectual capabilities for knowing objects through them.

Piaget, J. (1971). Insights and illusions of philosophy. New York: World Publishing Company. (Original work published in 1965)

Two hundred years later, Piaget reformulated this question from a more psychological perspective. It is no coincidence that he referred to Kant as “the father of us all” (Piaget, 1965/1971, p. 220). Several researchers (e.g., Lourenço & Machado, 1996; Smith, 1993) consider the question about the origin of necessary truth one of the central issues of Piagetian epistemology. Indeed, Piaget's investigations into object permanence, conservation of quantities, and operational knowledge – concepts that form the bedrock of mathematics and natural sciences – are directly related to the Kantian question.

Kant did not explain the origin of these judgments but assumed that they were attained by abstraction from the activity of the soul, which structures, according to eternal laws, its experiences (Kant, 1770/1968, § 8, § 15, corollary).

In the preface of his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant (1787/1933, B XVI) refers in the same way to the Copernican Revolution. He points out that for explaining the possibility of scientific knowledge about (physical) objects we have to reflect on central cognitive functions (intuition and categories). According to Piaget, however, the reversal of the attentional focus of the mind does not happen just once but several times – namely at every level transition.

From an epistemological perspective, a person is a uniform being who interprets the different parts of her conscious knowledge in a coherent fashion (or at least tries to do this). How do modular theories explain this search for coherence? And how do they explain necessary knowledge, which hardly can be domain-specific (Smith, 1993, p. 5)?

Organs are supple and capable of adapting to different situations and domains. Finally, they are open to development, and this is precisely what “stable systems” (Case, 1992a, p. 5) are not. But organs are much more complex than such systems, and it is much more difficult to understand them.

According to Piaget, the central idea of empiricism is that “the function of cognitive mechanisms is to submit to reality, copying its features as closely as possible, so that they may produce a reproduction which differs as little as possible from external reality” (Piaget & Inhelder, 1969/1976, p. 24).