Conversations Libres Avec Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget est mondialement connu, maïs à quel titre ? Était-il psychologue, biologiste, logicien, philosophe ? Il était au carrefour. Biologiste, il a construit une théorie de l'organisation vivante, de la logique de la vie, qui va de l'amibe à Einstein - nous compris. Psychologue, il s'est interrogé sur le fonctionnement de la pensée, ce miracle répété et, ce faisant, a découvert une chose simple et bouleversante : les étapes que franchit l'intelligence de l'enfant pour comprendre le monde sont les mêmes partout, avec des avances ou des retards, mais l'ordre des structures qu'acquiert l'intelligence en formation ne varie pas. Ainsi peut-on espérer lire, à travers cette histoire du développement individuel, celle du développement de l'esprit humain lui-même, de l'esprit scientifique ; et voilà Piaget retraçant, à partir de l'enfant, le cheminement historique de la connaissance. Il devient historien de l'intelligence humaine.

"What is most impressive about this book is its intelligence, its sophistication, and its charm. . . . This book presents Piaget's work and his person better than anything else that I know about."—David Elkind, Tufts University "The tone is one of constant movement from the most ordinary to the most abstruse. There are 14 conversations with 'le Patron,' some in 1969, some in 1975, and several more with co-workers in various fields. . . . In Mr. Bringuier's book, in a pleasant informal way, we see a sophisticated non-scientist exploring Piaget's domain with the master. Some of Piaget's best-known findings about children as explained along the way, but Mr. Bringuier has ways of bringing out the relation of this psychological work to the whole of Piaget's enterprise, and we get a good sense of the man and his work."—Howard E. Gruber, New York Times Book Review

Taking a socio-historical and cultural perspective, this book looks at Jean Piaget's own growth from childhood to scientific life. The international and multidisciplinary contributors examine the milieu in which Piaget was born and educated, and search for traces of the experiences, social relationships, commitments and debates that peppered his childhood and adolescence, and informed his future academic career.

After Piaget proves that Jean Piaget's work is critical for understanding some of the most current proposals in the study of psychological development. It analyzes Piaget's legacy, moving beyond the harsh critiques that have circulated since he lost prominence. It also brings together new developments and research practices that have grown out of Jean Piaget's tradition, while providing a retrospective glance into the intellectual atmospheres of different periods at which the contributors encountered Piaget.This book reveals the richness and coherence of the School of Geneva's research during the last decades before Piaget's death. Contributions from scholars who formed part of the School of Geneva during the 1970s and '80s demonstrate Piaget's influence on such diverse fields as infant development, ethnology, neuropsychology, semiotic development, and epistemology. After Piaget is part of Transaction's History and Theory of Psychology series.

This book is the outcome of a long and passionate debate among world experts about two of the most pivotal figures of psychology: Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotksy. The occasion was a week-long advanced course held at the Jean Piaget Archives in Geneva. The most interesting outcome of the meeting is that, in spite of differences in aims and scopes (epistemogenesis versus psychogenesis), in units of analysis (events versus action) and in social contents (Swiss capitalism versus Soviet communism) both Piaget and Vygotsky reached a similar conclusion: knowledge is constructed within a specific material and social context. Moreover, their views complement each other perfectly: where Vygotsky insists on varieties of psychological experiences, Piaget shows how, out of diversity, grows universality, so much so that the most communist of the two is not necessarily the one who was so labelled. This book is not only of interest to developmental, social and learning psychologists, but also deals with issues pertinent to education, epistemology, language, thought and cognition, anthropology and philosophy. It is likely to shed some light on the state of affairs in psychology for the general reader too, because it is clear and precise, straightforward and uses virtually no jargon.

The papers collected in this volume are all derived from the 29th Annual Symposium of JPS.The intent of the volume is to examine the issue of reductionism on the theoretical level in several sciences, including biology,psychology,&sociology.