What is Psychology Piaget

7/27/2019 What is Psychology Piaget

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What Is Psychology?JEAN PIAGET Geneva, Switzerland

CONST ANCE KAMII University of Illinois at Chicago Circle(Trans.) an d University of Geneva

ABST RACT : Five points ar e made: (1 ) Psychology isth e science no t only of the individual bu t also of hu-mans in general. For example, mathematics and physicshave been created by human beings, and this creationcan be understood only in terms of human intelligencein its totality. (2) Psychology is a natural science, and,like every other science, it is built not only with whatcomes from the object but also with th e structures con-structed by the subject. (3 ) Psychology occupies a keyposition among the sciences because it explains the no-tions an d operations used in the development of all thesciences. (4) It is impossible to dissociate psychologyfrom epistemology. (5 ) Psychology, like al l other sci-ences, can thrive only on interdisciplinary cooperation.

I am very honored by the confidence you haveshown in awarding me the Edward Lee ThorndikeAward for 19 77 . I am also moved by the excep-t ion you have made in allowing me to designatesomeone else to deliver this address, as travelingf rom Europe has become more an d more difficultfor me. My principal merit is to have been sur-rounded by first-rate collaborators. The books Ihave writ ten over th e years have also been signedby others w ho have contributed to their essence,beginning with B. Inhe lder .

If I gave a broad title to today's address, it ispartly because the public does not fully realize th eextraordinary developments that have occurred inpsychology since the beginning of this century. The18th International Congress of Psychology, whichw as held in Moscow in 1966 with 6,000 participants,ended its work w i th an address by Paul Fraisse, th ethen-new Pres ident of the Inte rnat ional Union ofScientific Psychology. In this address, Fraisse sum-marized h is impressions with th e striking sentence,"Psychology no longer knows an y taboo subject."To cite only one example [of what he meant], eversince psychology understood that it w as a science ofconduct and not only one of consciousness ("con-duct" re fe r r ing to behavior, but behavior that in -cludes the act of "becoming aware" of what wedo) , 1 w e could have worried that it would neglect648 JULY 1978 A M E R I C A N P S Y C H O L O G I S TCopyright 1978 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.0003-066X/78/3307-0648$00.75

consciousness, and this indeed happened to certainextremists . Howeve r , th e problem of consciousnesshas come back to the fore f ront of psychology, withthe work of psychoneurologists on "vigilance," orattention, an d with th e s tudy of development.Everybody pays attention to it today, includingRussian psychologists, regardless of their philos-ophy .

I have f ive remarks to make about psychology.The first is perhaps obvious, but not to every-body . It is that psychology is the science not onlyo f th e individual but also of humans in general an dnotably of "the subject" in a universal sense.Surely, applied psychology can in certain situationsbe interested in individual cases, and the empiricalor theoretical study of ind ivid ual cases representsan interes ting chapter called "diffe rential psychol-ogy" [o r th e psychology of individual di f ferences] .But even in applied psychology the subject in gen-eral necessarily interve nes . For example, to re formthe teaching of mathematics or physics, we cannotconsider only the retardation or difficulties of par-ticular individual pupils. The problem consistsfirst o f situating th e knowledge of mathematics,physics, and every other science in the totality ofthe process of intelligence and its development.And this is a problem of human intelligence in itstotality, which is related to general problems ofknowledge to which I shall return shortly.My second point requires more comment. Psy-

This article was an address by Jean Piaget translated anddelivered by Constance Kamii at the annual convent ion ofth e American Psy chological Association, San Francisco, Au-gust 29, 1977. Divis ion 15 (Educational Psychology)awarded th e au thor th e 1977 Edward Lee ThorndikeAward for Distinguished Psychological Contribution toEducation.Material in brackets , throughout th e article, ha s beenadded by the translator.1 [The French words conduite and comportement areusually both translated into English as behavior, perhapsbecause conduct has a moral connotat ion. As can be seenin this context, the term conduct does no t necessarily haveany moral connotation.]


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chology is a natural science, and if this i s now unde r -stood in most countr ies, i t pleases me to point outthat this position in the classification of fields ofknowledge has been practiced for a long time in thegreat Genevan tradition since 1890, when the chairI had the honor of occupying unt i l my re t i r ementin 1971 w as f ounde d . T. Flournoy wanted toplace this chair in the Faculty of Sciences, and thisexample is often cited. But this situation is some-times a source of serious misunderstanding, as cer-tain philosophers (I am th inking, among others, ofHusser l and phenomenology) oppose the t ranscen-dental against the "natural" in orde r to emphasizethe inadequacy of "naturalism." Let us recall thatthe transcendental, according to philosophers, refersto conditions prior to knowledge and to instrumentsof know i ng that exist before exper ience , in a sensemore logical than chronologica lnamely , the [cog-ni t ive] inst rumen ts that are necessary to rend er ex-perience possible. If I use this term transcendentalhere (which I do not often use) , it is simply todesignate what , in knowledge , comes not from th eobject but from the st ructures constructed by thesubject . I will return to this point shor t ly in con-nect ion with a discussion of actions.

These misunderstandings are due also to certainscientists as well as to philosophers. The source ofthe misunderstanding must be sought in "positiv-ism," which gave to o nar r ow an image to nature an dparticularly to the sciences of nature, thus making aneasy target that does not even require careful aim.Positivism is a doctr ine of the limits of science, andposit ivists wanted to limit science to cer ta in prob-lems and consider others as being "metaphysical"(hence the temptat ion to have both scientific psy-chology and "philosophical" psychology). We knowthat these boundaries have always been violated.Auguste Comte proscribed "causal explanations" infavor only of the search fo r "laws," but, in fact ,scientists are not sat isf ied with descr ipt ions of phe -nomena and do not stop looking for explanat ions.Comte condemned the calculation of probabilities,the study of astrophysics, and the use of the micro-scope, and the positivists who followed him pro-scr ibed the study of the atom as result ing f rom th esearch fo r causes, and we now know what happenedto all of these beliefs! It is good to recall thesefacts from time to time because this allows us tojudge certain proh ibit ions o r l imitat ions that no onetoday w ould w ant to impose on science.

Neither science nor psychology is positivist. Theyare "open" to new problems without limit. Theylive on crises and revolutions as well as on con-

t inuity an d t r ad i t i on ( se e Kuhn , 1 9 7 0 ) . Theysubmit to all new facts and must constant ly re-examine their pr inciples and methods. They ac-knowledge the two fundamental principles Flournoylaid out for himself a long time ago: (1) Every-thing is possible ("There are more things in heavenand ear th . . . " ) , but (2) the weight of proof mustbe proport ional to the st rangeness (or novelty) ofthe facts.

In such a perspective, "naturalism" in the classi-cal sense (and in the sense that Husserl still wantedto combat) is only a myth, and this i s t rue for tworeasons. The f irst is that natur e is inex haust ible,and we can know it only by successive approxima-tion. The danger of naturalism, as understoodthrough posit ivism, was in its reduct ion of higherorder concepts to lower order ones, as exemplifiedby the exaggerated re duct ion o f certain higher ordermechanisms to condi t ioned reflexes. But those w hobelieved in this danger did not suspect the pos-sibility of forms of thought such as those of con-temporary dialect ical currents. In reality, whenw e try to reduce "higher order" concept s to alower level , the red uct ion is only app arent , becausesooner or later the "lower order" concept is enrichedby higher level conceptualizations. This is whatw e saw with Einstein when Newtonian gravitationw as reduc ed to geo metry. Animal psychology, too,has already enriched biology, as certain authorssuch as G. G. Simpson interpret animal psychologyas a factor in evolution.

The second reason is that knowledge , or the sci-ences of nature , is constant ly undergoing reor-ganizat ion. Indeed, no science can be placed on asingle plane, and each one of them involves multiplean d distinct epistemological levels. All sciences ofnature, therefore, involve transcendental aspectsas def ined above in the sense of inst ruments neces-sary for s t ruc tur ingtranscendental aspects thatare inherent in research itself an d that are in con-stant movement and construction impossible tosubstantiate or put d o w n on paper once and for all.In fact, there exists a reflexive progress in the sci-ences (which is indissociable f rom their progress inextension) . It consists of the constant delineat ionof new condit ions of intelligibility, which ar etranscendental with respect to the content of laterexperience. To engage in physics or biology, forexample, mathematics 2 and logic are necessary, and

2 Even in mathematics itself, th e Bourbakis used th emethod of mapping to construct their matrix structures, an dA M E R I C A N P S Y C H O L O G I S T JULY 1978 649


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mathematics an d logic are built not on facts bu ton boundless human construction and the very co-ordination of our actions on reality.This notion of the subject's "actions" often givesrise to misunderstanding because there is a tend-ency to reduce actions to mere material actions,when they can be interiorized in the form of mental"operations," and the operations themselves can(and even must) be coordinated into "structures"such as seriation, classification, and enumeration.These structures, which ar e constructed by childrenthemselves (and not received f rom th e outside) , re-sult f rom their actions. Structures consist of "whatthe children can do" in given situations, and notoi what they think of it (their becoming aware ofwhat they do always remains incomplete). In-deed, elementary actions begin by being material(i.e., moving objects, pull ing them, pushing them,turning them over, etc .) , but even from the sensori-motor level they become coordinated among them-selves into structures such as the "(pract ical) groupof displacements." Later on, the same movements,and many other more complex ones, will be carriedout mentally, but these will still be actions, whichenrich reality with a set of possible transforma-tions, that is , with structures constructed by thesubject, without which knowledge of objects wouldremain impossible.To stay with examples related to space, one cancite the case of systems of reference (o r "coordi-nates") that allow children 7-10 years of age tounders tand that to determine th e position of apoint on a surface, there must be two coordinates,one vertical and the other horizontal. Youngersubjects believe that it is enough to use one diagonalmeasure from a corner of the surface. These youngsubjects do not realize that if they do this, therear e many indeterminate positions possible, depend-ing on the angle of the diagonal line. This is agood example of actions that have not yet becomeoperatory an d have not yet attained a "structure."The structure th e children later construct expresseswhat they "know how to do" and what they figureout w ith their ow n means.

Likewise, in the case of a logical structure suchas seriationfor example,A


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tions proposed by the famous authors of PrincipiaMathematica are, in reality, inadequate) ,3 algebraicstructures (and child psychology shows us how the"matrix structures" of Bourbaki are "natural" an dare due to man's intelligence), geometrical struc-tures (and w hy topological structures precede Eu-clidean an d projective f rameworks) , elementarykine t ic notions (among others , the relationship be-tween time and speed) , logical structures in gen-eral, etc. It is to this research that I have devotedmore than SO years.Psychology thus occupies a key posit ion, and itsimplications become increasingly clear. Th e verysimple reason for this is that if the sciences of na-ture explain th e human species, humans in turnexplain the sciences of nature, and it is up to psy-chology to show us how. Psychology, in fact , repre-sents th e junc tu re of two opposite directions ofscientific thought that ar e dialectically comple-mentary. It follows that th e system of sciencescannot be arranged in a l inear order , as manypeople beginning with Auguste Comte have at -tempted to arrange them. The form that charac-terizes the system of sciences is that of a circle, ormore precisely, that of a spiral as it becomes everlarger. In fact, objects are known only through thesubject, while th e subject can know himself or her -self only by acting on objects materially and men-tally. Indeed, if objects are innumerable and sci-ence indefinitely diverse, al l knowledge of the sub-ject bring s us back to p sychology , the sc ience ofthe subject and the subje ct 's actions.The four th remark: People may say that I thusengage in philosophy or epistemology and no longerin scientific psychology . But, in the research thatw e pursue, it is impossible to dissociate psychologyfrom epistemology. Indeed, i f we study only onelevel of development ( for example, that of the adultor adolescent), it is easy to distinguish th e prob-lems: psychological experience, emotions, intelli-gence and its functions, etc., on the one hand, an dthe broad problems of knowledge (epistemology),etc., on the other. But if we want to study cogni-tive functions and pursue a developmental point ofview in order to study th e formation an d trans-formations of human intell igence (and this i s whyI specialized in child psychology), then the prob-lems must be formulated very differently: How i sknowledge acquired, how does it increase, and howdoes it become organized or reorganize d? Thesear e th e very questions that must be answered . Buthere, the answers we find, and from which we canonly choose by more or less refining them, are neces-

sarily of the following three types: Either knowl-edge comes exclusively from the object, or it isconstructed by the subject alone, or it results f rommultiple interactions between the subject and theobjectbut what interactions and in wha t form?Indeed, we see at once that these are epistemologi-cal solutions stemming f rom empiricism, apriorism,or diverse interactionism, which are more or lessstatic or dialectic. In short , it is impossible toavoid epistemological problems in this kind of re-searchepistemological problems that concern epis-temology in movement , or genetic (.psychogenetic)epistemology.

From this follows my fifth and final remark.Psychology, like all other sciences, can live andprosper only in an interdisciplinary atmosphere.Interd isc ip l inary relationships indeed exist , bu t theyare still insufficient. In the science of human be-ings, it is clear, fo r example, that the study of in-telligence brings up the problem of the relationshipbetween thought an d languagehence a collabora-tion between psychology an d l inguist ics; and thecurrent work of l inguists on transformational gram-mar and linguistic structure in general is verypromising fo r possible comparisons with the op-eratory character of intelligence. Bu t this is animmense field to cover , an d collaborations are onlybeginning . Likew ise, there exist numero us rela-tionships between data from the science of eco-nomics and of "conducts," an d game (o r decision)theory, which w as elaborated by economists, con-stitutes a very en l ightening ins t rument for theanalysis of "strategies" of behavior. But here, too,collaboration is only beginning. The relationshipbetween psychology and sociology is evide.nt butstill not sufficiently elaborated, notably in the realmof development. As far as the biological sciencesare concerned, the connections among psychology,physiology, and neurology are close, but many rela-tionships between general biology and the theory ofintell igence remain untouched. Indeed, many otherfields of coope ration remain equally indispensableand are only beginning to take place-with logic orgeneral algebra and with the epistemology of mathe-matics and physics, for example.Everyth ing that I have been able to do in morethan 20 years of interdisciplinary research is due to

3 In fact, Russell an d Whi tehead explain th e formation ofnumber in terms of one-to-one correspondence betweenelements of equiva lent classes. However , one-to-one cor-respondence already implies number, and thus there is herean obvious vicious circle.A M E R I C A N P S Y C H O L O G I S T JULY 1978 651


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collaboration with specialists f r o m all of these fields, first, had d i f f i c u l t y in understanding each other,and the International Center of Genetic Epistemol- have show n us the increasing an d unexpectedogy, to which the Faculty of Psychology has ex- fecundity of these ever closer contacts. I hope totended its kind hospital i ty, w as created in 1955 continue th e wo rk of the International Center ofprecisely to facil i tate interd iscip linary cooperation. Genetic Epistemology in the same interdisciplinaryWith the present state of knowledge, it would, in manner ,fact, be regrettable and visionless to leave such col-laboration to chance encounters or individual initia- R E F E R E N C E Sl ive. Interd iscip linary cooperation is necessary and K a m i i , C., & D e V r i e s , R. P h y s i c a l k n o w l e d g e in p r e s c h o o lmust be organized. More than 20 years of experi - e d u c a t i o n : I m p l i c a t i o n s o j P i a g e t ' s t h e o r y . Englewood, .I , , , ,,. ,. ,.. C l i f f s , N.J.: Prentice-H all, 1978.ence and the abundance of publications resulting Kuhll) Ts The stmctwe o} scientific revolutions (2ndf r o m these exchanges among researchers who, at ed.). Chicago: Universi ty o f Chicago Press, 1970.

Editors Sought for New JPSPIn January 1980, the American Psychological Association will publish the Journalo f Personality and Social Psychology in a new format consisting of three separatelyedited and identifiable sections appearing each mon th as a single boun d issue. Thesections are Attitudes and Social Cognition, Interpersonal Relations and GroupProcesses, an d Personality an d Individual Processes. Articles in the three sectionswill be selected by three autonomous editors, each of whom will work wi th separategroups of advisory editors. Th e number of pages to be published in JPSP eachyear w ill be based o n the three editors ' rec omm end ations to APA's Publications andCommunications (P& C) Board. Autho rs will be asked to submit manuscripts to theappropriate section editor according to a manuscript's major variables and theoreti-ca l orie ntation . W hen the three section editors are ready to receive articles in 1979,detailed lists of topics appropriate to each section will be published.

Th e plans to restructure JPSP are the result of several years of deliberation bythe P&C Board. In 1974 an d 1975, after considering th e content of submissions,number of submissions, an d number of published pages, a task force chaired byAlbert Hastorf reco mmen ded a sectioned JPSP. Board action on this recommenda-tion was originally postponed; during the past year, however, surveys of individualsubscribers and members of APA's Division of Personality an d Social Psychologyhave made it clear that the change to a sectioned journal is desirable and should beimplemented as soon as possible.The P&C Board invites immediate nominations for the three editorships of JPSP.Nominations should be received before August 1, 1978. The new editors will beselected by early fall so that they can begin receiving manuscripts early in 1979 fo rpublication beginning in J anuary 1980. Nom ination s should be sent to David Zea-man, Department of Psychology, Bo x U-20, Universi ty of Connecticut, Storrs, Con-necticut 06268. Names of the new editors wil l be announced later this year .

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What is Psychology Piaget

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