Another neo-structuralist is Jean Piaget. Originally a biologist, he is now best remembered for his work on the development of cognition. Many would argue that he, more than anyone else, is responsible for the creation of cognitive psychology. If the English-speaking world had only learned to read a little French, this would be true without a doubt. Unfortunately, his work was only introduced in English after 1950, and only became widely known in the 1960's -- just on time to be a part of the cognitive movement, but not of its creation.

Jean Piaget was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, on August 9, 1896. His father, Arthur Piaget, was a professor of medieval literature with an interest in local history. His mother, Rebecca Jackson, was intelligent and energetic, but Jean found her a bit neurotic -- an impression that he said led to his interest in psychology, but away from pathology! The oldest child, he was quite independent and took an early interest in nature, especially the collecting of shells. He published his first “paper”when he was ten -- a one page account of his sighting of an albino sparrow.

He began publishing in earnest in high school on his favorite subject, mollusks. He was particularly pleased to get a part time job with the director of Nuechâtel’s Museum of Natural History, Mr. Godel. His work became well known among European students of mollusks, who assumed he was an adult! All this early experience with science kept him away, he says, from “the demon of philosophy.”

Later in adolescence, he faced a bit a crisis of faith: Encouraged by his mother to attend religious instruction, he found religious argument childish. Studying various philosophers and the application of logic, he dedicated himself to finding a “biological explanation of knowledge.” Ultimately, philosophy failed to assist him in his search, so he turned to psychology.

After high school, he went on to the University of Neuchâtel. Constantly studying and writing, he became sickly, and had to retire to the mountains for a year to recuperate. When he returned to Neuchâtel, he decided he would write down his philosophy. A fundamental point became a centerpiece for his entire life’s work: “In all fields of life (organic, mental, social) there exist ‘totalities’ qualitatively distinct from their parts and imposing on them an organization.” This principle forms the basis of his structuralist philosophy, as it would for the Gestaltists, Systems Theorists, and many others.

In 1918, Piaget received his Doctorate in Science from the University of Neuchâtel. He worked for a year at psychology labs in Zurich and at Bleuler’s famous psychiatric clinic. During this period, he was introduced to the works of Freud, Jung, and others. In 1919, he taught psychology and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris. Here he met Simon (of Simon-Binet fame) and did research on intelligence testing. He didn’t care for the “right-or-wrong” style of the intelligent tests and started interviewing his subjects at a boys school instead, using the psychiatric interviewing techniques he had learned the year before. In other words, he began asking how children reasoned.

In 1921, his first article on the psychology of intelligence was published in the Journal de Psychologie.  In the same year, he accepted a position at the Institut J. J. Rousseau in Geneva.  Here he began with his students to research the reasoning of elementary school children.  This research became his first five books on child psychology.  Although he considered this work highly preliminary, he was surprised by the strong positive public reaction to his work.

In 1923, he married one of his student coworkers, Valentine Châtenay.  In 1925, their first daughter was born; in 1927, their second daughter was born; and in 1931, their only son was born.  They immediately became the focus of intense observation by Piaget and his wife.  This research became three more books!

In 1929, Piaget began work as the director of the Bureau International Office de l’Education, in collaboration with UNESCO.  He also began large scale research with A. Szeminska, E. Meyer, and especially Bärbel Inhelder, who would become his major collaborator.  Piaget, it should be noted, was particularly influential in bringing women into experimental psychology.  Some of this work, however, wouldn’t reach the world outside of Switzerland until World War II was over.

In 1940, He became chair of Experimental Psychology, the Director of the psychology laboratory, and the president of the Swiss Society of Psychology.  In 1942, he gave a series of lectures at the Collège de France, during the Nazi occupation of France.  These lectures became The Psychology of Intelligence.  At the end of the war, he was named President of the Swiss Commission of UNESCO.

Also during this period, he received a number of honorary degrees.  He received one  from the Sorbonne in 1946, the University of Brussels and the University of Brazil in 1949, on top of an earlier one from Harvard in 1936.  And, in 1949 and 1950, he published his synthesis, Introduction to Genetic Epistemology.

In 1952, he became a professor at the Sorbonne.  In 1955, he created the International Center for Genetic Epistemology, of which he served as director the rest of his life.  And, in 1956, he created the School of Sciences at the University of Geneva.

He continued working on a general theory of structures and tying his psychological work to biology for many more years.  Likewise, he continued his public service through UNESCO as a Swiss delegate.  By the end of his career, he had written over 60 books and many hundreds of articles.  He died in Geneva, September 16, 1980, one of the most significant psychologists of the twentieth century.

Jean Piaget began his career as a biologist -- specifically, a malacologist!  But his interest in science and the history of science soon overtook his interest in snails and clams.  As he delved deeper into the thought-processes of doing science, he became interested in the nature of thought itself, especially in the development of thinking.  Finding relatively little work done in the area, he had the opportunity to give it a label.  He called it genetic epistemology, meaning the study of the development of knowledge.

He noticed, for example, that even infants have certain skills in regard to objects in their environment.  These skills were certainly simple ones, sensorimotor skills, but they directed the way in which the infant explored his or her environment and so how they gained more knowledge of the world and more sophisticated exploratory skills. These skills he called schemas.

For example, an infant knows how to grab his favorite rattle and thrust it into his mouth.  He’s got that schema down pat.  When he comes across some other object -- say daddy’s expensive watch, he easily learns to transfer his “grab and thrust” schema to the new object.  This Piaget called assimilation, specifically assimilating a new object into an old schema.

When our infant comes across another object again -- say a beach ball -- he will try his old schema of grab and thrust.  This of course works poorly with the new object.  So the schema will adapt to the new object:  Perhaps, in this example, “squeeze and drool” would be an appropriate title for the new schema.  This is called accommodation, specifically accommodating an old schema to a new object.

Assimilation and accommodation are the two sides of adaptation, Piaget’s term for what most of us would call learning.  Piaget saw adaptation, however, as a good deal broader than the kind of learning that Behaviorists in the US were talking about.  He saw it as a fundamentally biological process.  Even one’s grip has to accommodate to a stone, while clay is assimilated into our grip.  All living things adapt, even without a nervous system or brain.

Assimilation and accommodation work like pendulum swings at advancing our understanding of the world and our competency in it.  According to Piaget, they are directed at a balance between the structure of the mind and the environment, at a certain congruency between the two, that would indicate that you have a good (or at least good-enough) model of the universe.  This ideal state he calls equilibrium.

As he continued his investigation of children, he noted that there were periods where assimilation dominated, periods where accommodation dominated, and periods of relative equilibrium, and that these periods were similar among all the children he looked at in their nature and their timing.  And so he developed the idea of stages of cognitive development.  These constitute a lasting contribution to psychology.

[For much more detail on Piaget's theory -- especially the childhood stages -- click here!]