Critical Readings on Piaget

Leslie Smith, Leslie Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134786138
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Critical Readings on Piaget is a follow-up to Piaget: Critical Assessments a collection of eighty-three papers dealing with the critique of Piaget's work in psychology, education and philosophy during the period 1950-90. This new collection tracks developments in the most recent published work during the period 1990-95, with an integral guide and editorial commentary by Leslie Smith. Starting with Piaget's epistemology, a major intellectual resource in departmental psychology and eduction, Leslie Smith sets out the main elements of Piaget's position in relation to twenty one papers, dealing with equilibration and equilibrium, education and social development, reasoning development, number development and modal knowledge. A conclusion examines the psychological and educational assessment of Piaget's epistemology. This collection of distinctive studies during the last five years provides high-profile and engaging examples from current research in this area. It will provide a useful and compact text for undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers.

Chapter 1
Piaget’s first theory of equilibrium (1918)

Jacques Vonèche

Partout l’idée en mission s’avance

Victor Hugo, Voix intérieures, 1837

THEORETICIANS OF EQUILIBRIUM

Contrary to a particularly widespread idea, Piaget is not the only psychologist whose theory is grounded on the notion of equilibrium. Indeed, if we define equilibrium in a very simple way as a principle that affirms a relation between a system (or an organism) and its environment, so that any change in the environment produces an adjustment of the system in the sense that it tends to keep constant a certain number of conditions of existence of the system which are considered desirable if not vital for the system in question, then the theories of Spencer (1892), Freud (1923–25/1964), Watson (1929), Dewey (1933), Heider (1946) and Festinger (1957) are theories based on the principle of equilibrium.

Indeed, Spencer writes that:

If the strengths of the connexions between the internal states are not proportionate to the persistences of the relations between the answering external agents, there will be a failure of the correspondence—the inner order will disagree with the outer order.

(p. 409)

Now, this is a good definition of disequilibrium.

There is a striking resemblance between Dewey’s conception of equilibrium in problem-solving and the way in which Piaget expresses himself. Here is Dewey’s text:

Suppose you are walking along where there is no regular path. As long as everything goes smoothly, you do not have to think about your walking; your already formed habit takes care of it. Suddenly, you find a ditch in your way. You think you will jump it (supposition, plan); but to make sure, you survey it with your eyes (observation) and you find that it is pretty wide and that the bank on the other side is slippery (facts, data), you then wonder if the ditch may not be narrower somewhere else (idea) and you look up and down the stream (observation) to see how matters stand (rest of idea by observation). You do not find any good place and so are thrown back upon forming a new plan. As you are casting about, you discover a log (fact again). You ask yourself whether you could not haul that to the ditch and get it across the ditch to use as a bridge (idea again). You judge that idea as worth trying, and so you get the log and manage to put it in place and walk across (test and confirmation by overt action).

(p. 105)

The following is a psychological analysis given by Piaget at a time when he still had a car [Piaget’s analysis was also presented in English in order to emphasise the parallel between the two extracts]. One is struck by the subtlety of the introspection.

In order better to understand the mechanism of this assimilation which has become deductive while remaining on the plane of sensorimotor operations, let us again analyze a case of elementary practical invention observed in an adult and consequently capable of correct introspection. While driving an old automobile I am bothered by oil on the steering wheel which makes it slippery. Lacking time to stop I take out my handkerchief and dry the spots. When putting it in my pocket I observe that it is too greasy and look for a place to put it without soiling anything. I put it between my seat and the one next to me, as deeply as possible in the crevice. An hour later the rain forces me to close the windshield but the resulting heat makes me try to open it a little. The screws being worn out, I cannot succeed; it only stays wide open or completely shut. I try to hold the windshield slightly open with my left hand, but my fatigue makes me think that some object could replace my hand. I look around me, but nothing is in evidence. While looking at the windshield I have the impression that the object could be put, not at the bottom of the windshield (one pushed it at the bottom to open it), but by wedging it in the angle formed by the right edge of the windshield and the vertical upright of the body of the car. I have the vague feeling of an analogy between the solution to be found and a problem already solved before. The solution then becomes clarified. My tendency to put an object into the corner of the windshield meets a sort of motor memory of having just a few minutes before placed something into a crevice. I try to remember what it was, but no definite representation comes to mind. Then suddenly, without having time to imagine anything, I understand the solution and find myself already in the act of searching with my hand for the hidden handkerchief. Therefore the latter schema directed my search and directed me toward the lateral corner of the windshield when my last idea was a different one.

This trite observation demonstrates very well how a sensorimotor search can arouse schemata previously acquired and make them function independently of internal language and clear representation. The tendency to introduce an object into a slit, in this example, is modeled exactly on a schema remaining in an almost purely motor state, and the conjunction thus produced suffices to insure discovery of a solution. One therefore understands how a sensorimotor deduction is possible in the small child through simple practical evocation of the schemata and independently of a well-defined system of representations.

(1936/1952, p. 345)

Watson (1929) uses the model of equilibrium to explain how behaviour appears:

We shall see that there are common factors running through all forms of human acts. In each adjustment, there is always both a response or act and a stimulus or situation which calls out that response. Without going too far beyond our facts, it seems possible to say that the stimulus is always provided by the environment, external to the body, or by the movement of man’s muscles and the secretions will be changed through action or through cognitive reorganization. If a change is not possible, the state of imbalance will produce tension.

(p. 39)

In the same way, Freud (1923–1925/1964), like the others, resorts to the equilibrium principle when he writes:

It seems a plausible view that this displaceable and neutral energy, which is no doubt active both in the ego and in the id, proceeds from the narcissistic store of libido—that it is desexualised Eros… From this, we can easily go on to assume that this displaceable libido is employed in the service of the pleasure principle to obviate blockages and to facilitate discharge.

(pp. 44–45)

Clearly for Freud, pleasure derives from an equilibrium between the organism and its environment, and between contradictory forces within the organism. In response to these forces, the organism puts its energy into certain forms of behaviour which alleviate the conflicts and make pleasure possible, that is, when it is at rest in an equilibrium free from tensions.

We shall see a little further on how close this is to Piaget’s first theory of equilibrium. Now, Piaget had become familiar with Freud’s ideas at a conference given by Flournoy to the Associations chrétiennes de jeunes gens in 1916 (Piaget 1945; Vidal 1989).

More recently, Heider (1946) has used the principle of equilibrium to explain the coherence of the social behaviour of an individual. He writes:

A balanced state exists if all parts of a unit have the same dynamic character (i.e. if all are positive or negative), and if entities with different dynamic characters are segregated from each other. If no balanced state exists, then focus toward this state will arise. Either the dynamic characters will change, or the unit relations will be changed through action or through cognitive reorganization. If a change is not possible, the state of imbalance will produce tension.

(p. 39)

This distinctly Gestaltist note is also found in Piaget’s first theory of equilibrium.

The same idea of internal coherence by re-equilibrating is also a central principle of Léon Festinger’s (1957) theory of cognitive dissonance, as is shown by the following lines:

It has frequently been implied…that the individual strives toward consistency within himself. His opinions and attitudes, for example, tend to exist in clusters that are internally consistent.

(p. 1)

The existence of dissonance, being psychologically uncomfortable, will motivate the person to try to reduce the dissonance and achieve consonance. When dissonance is present, in addition to trying to reduce it, the person will actively avoid situations and information which would be likely to increase the dissonance.

(p. 3)

EVOLUTION OF THE NOTION OF EQUILIBRIUM IN PIAGET’S WORK

Contrary to the above-mentioned thinkers, Piaget does not use the concept of equilibrium to show that the organism has different states, but to explain how knowledge develops, i.e. why the organism has not only different states but also better ones. This is what Piaget calls the optimising or improving nature of equilibration.

Not only is Piaget not the only author to use the notion of equilibrium in psychology outside its common acceptation (e.g. an unbalanced person killed a passer-by) but, in addition, he did not have a single theory of equilibrium but several. We have distinguished with Inhelder and Garcia (1976) at least three successive forms of the theory.

Of these three forms, only the first is of interest to us here. The second theory formulated by Piaget in Logique et Equilibre (1957) was abandoned by its author shortly after publication, but remained the sole reference on this subject for more than twenty years. Piaget’s central problem, at that time, was to explain the necessary, but not predetermined nature of the order of the sequences of cognitive development. To do this, he was animated by his own work on perception, on the encounters and couplings between the subject and his environment, and on what was understood at the time about game theory.

The main problem with this model, for Piaget, lay in the fact that it was too logico-mathematical—statistical even—in nature and that it overlooked the biological aspects of knowledge, in particular the principle of auto-regulation which is more than just a balance between physico-chemical forces; it necessarily involves a conservation of the parts by the whole and vice-versa. Now, as we shall see in the analysis of Piaget’s first theory of equilibrium, this is precisely how he defined regulations right from the beginning.

The third theory published in the Equilibration of Cognitive Structures (1975/1985) tends to overcome these difficulties by emphasising the indissociability of compensations and constructions. For Piaget, any compensation of a perturbation by the organism necessarily implies progress since the perturbed activity has become perturbable, by the very fact that it has been compensated, which is the same as completing or improving it. This possibility of improving behaviour differentiates it from the purely physiological process of homeostasis, whence, from the outset, a tendency to constructions and to the production of novelties.

We shall not go into the mechanisms (e.g. negation, contradiction, abstraction, generalisation, integration) by which re-equilibrations take place. Nor shall we try to explain the theory of equilibrium. Nor shall we show why the notion of equilibrium is a central concept in Piaget’s theory of the development of cognitive systems. We shall not even try to justify Piaget’s basic formula, defended by some of his friends like Rolando Garcia, that equilibration theories involve structural discontinuity within a functional continuity. All you will find here is a historical study of the genesis of an idea that was central to the cosmic system of a young man aged twenty, and about which he wrote in a more or less autobiographical “novel” entitled echerche.

THE NOTION OF EQUILIBRIUM IN RECHERCHE (1918)

Bergson’s influence

This novel can be considered as being part of the spiritualist revival against the positivist materialism of the “stupid 19th century” as indicated in the opening chapters of the book which mention Charles Péguy, Cardinal Mercier, Pastor Monod, Auguste Sabatier, Ferdinand Buisson. But it is also in the line of critical rationalism represented by philosophers such as Léon Brunschvicg for example, and with French metaphysicians such as Fouillée, Guyau, Boutroux and Lalande. What the young Piaget perceives remarkably well during the 1914–18 war is the crisis of European science, as Husserl called it, both as regards the nature of the relations between science and religion and the different forms of knowledge.

In his attempt to reconcile “a vague system” and “fragile metaphysical structures” with science, young Piaget found no better reference than Henri Bergson, the philosopher who had marked his youth with an indelible stamp.

Following in Bergson’s footsteps, Piaget contrasts the physicogeometrical order of things, allowing mathematical generalisation and based mainly on repetition, with the vital order based on tendency, vital energy, creation and therefore transformation. Consequently, knowledge (which is life) will also concern transformations from one state to another. This idea will accompany Piaget throughout his life. Indeed, from his point of view, all that is not absolute must necessarily be transformed, for progress is situated in the transformation. Evolution is thus, as thought Bergson, always creative. It can only end in the moral absolute as far as man is concerned and in the vital absolute for animals.

The reader will have recognised here the resurgence, through Bergson, of the Aristotelian science of kinds. Piaget does not try to hide this:

Sebastian, who had always been enthusiastic about Bergson’s philosophy, did not accept any of its particular theses, but believed all the same that he prolonged it in its underlying logic. He was Bergsonian without duration, which is the limit for Bergsonism… What pleased him in particular was the way in which this philosophy had shown the possibility of rehabilitating the Greek kinds. Indeed, Bergson had brilliantly understood that the time had come to reintroduce kinds into modern science. His whole psychology was deeply affected by this ulterior motive. His biology, which had stayed rather superficial and verbal, could also be interpreted in a similar way.

Only, Bergson did not define the kind [italics added] and we don’t see how he could have done so without seriously upsetting his system. All the work was left to be done then, and it was much more scientific in nature than philosophical. Aristotle, the genius of kinds, was a biologist: It was through biology that the construction should have taken place.

(p. 53)

For Aristotle, as everyone knows, the law of falling bodies can be explained by the natural tendency of earthly bodies to return to their natural place, to wit, the earth. There is a comic version of this theory: the dormitive virtue of opium in Molière’s work. There is also a contemporary version: sociobiology.

For Bergson, the natural link between living bodies is life as a whole. Bergson called this effort towards life “vital energy”. Vital energy is transmitted from one generation to another by the heredity of adaptations acquired by ancestors. This transformation of an adaptive change into a hereditary structure seems universal to Piaget, so much so that it encompasses logico-mathematical structures which are thought of as activities of adaptive classification. This leads him to consider intelligence as a form that is at once logical, biological and moral: logical because it is a normative structure of thought; biological because it is an adaptive organ of the individual; and moral because it is the logic of the subject’s action.

Such a trilogy (we could almost say a trilogic) led Piaget very close to pragmatism; this was not surprising since, as everyone knows, William James had close links with Geneva and the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and since Piaget had read some of Edouard Claparède’s essays on psychology. Indeed, when Piaget brings together the adaptive fact and the normative one, and in return, the norm of adaptation, he is to a certain extent flirting with pragmatism. But Piaget rejected pragmatism because he considered it as too relativistic; so he revived the science of kinds which gave him the notion of a quality opposed to that of quantity, as shown in the following passage:

The science of kinds. Relation between the whole and its parts

In modern times, and especially since Descartes’ universal mathematism, science has been confined to the study of quantity. A phenomenon has no value for the savant unless it can be measured and unless the quantities that it thus offers to experimentation are comparable to those of other phenomena. Biology and the sciences of the mind have, it is true, constantly introduced the quality into their field of study, but always with the idea that it is provisory and that sooner or later the quantity will be found to verify the thus established laws.

For the Ancients, on the contrary, everything was quality in natural science, and science as a whole was modelled on Aristotle’s type of biology.

Where is the truth? I don’t mean to be suspicious about the results of modern science, but I wonder if its exclusivism is not an abuse. By neglecting quantity, science has enabled philosophy to keep it for itself and you know how…it leaves the door open to metaphysics.

(p. 149)

But philosophy is wrong when it pretends that it knows quality itself. Only the relations between qualities are accessible and most philosophers would agree with this.

But it is precisely this kind of relationship that science has refused— perhaps not in reality, but by right. And this is why it is often arbitrary in the field of the living, be it organic life or psychological life. Now if, on the contrary, we introduce a positive theory of the quality, which only takes into account the relations of equilibrium and disequilibrium between our qualities, we have a life science founded on the ruins of metaphysics.

Therefore, it is very important to go deeper into these premisses. First of all, the assumption on which this construction is based is that an original quality corresponds to each material movement as defined by its physical properties, and especially to each rhythmic movement. If you superpose two rhythms, you get two qualities. Combine two rhythms into a common rhythm and you will have a new quality which you cannot call original but about which you can say that the equivalent, the physical notation, is the result of the first two rhythms, and so on.

In addition, let us adopt from the outset the materialist hypothesis of an exact parallelism between the manifestations of the organism and t...