The Psychology of Intelligence by Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget is widely acknowledged as one of the most important scholars of the twentieth century. In 1955 he founded the Center for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva with funds from the Rockefeller Foundation and in 1956 he founded and became director of the Institute for Educational Science in Geneva. He also taught at universities in Paris, Lausanne, and Neuchâtel was chairman of the International Bureau of Education and was a Swiss delegate to UNESCO (United Nations Economic and Scientific Committee).

This led to the question that he would spend the rest of his life studying: How do children learn?Īfter 1921 Piaget was successively director of research, assistant director, and co-director at the Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute, later part of Geneva University, where he was professor of the history of scientific thought (1929–1939). Piaget thought that these quantitative tests were too rigid and saw that children’s incorrect answers better revealed their qualitative thinking at various stages of development. In Paris at the Sorbonne he studied abnormal psychology, logic, and epistemology, and in 1920 with Théodore Simon in the Binet Laboratory he developed standardized reasoning tests. Work in two psychological laboratories in Zurich introduced him to psychoanalysis. Biology (the study of life) was thus merged with epistemology (the study of knowledge), both basic to his later learning theories. Piaget’s godfather introduced him to philosophy.

At Neuchâtel University he finished natural-science studies in 1916 and earned the doctoral degree for research on mollusks in 1918.

One article, written when he was 15, led to a job offer at Geneva’s natural-history museum he declined in order to continue his education. His help in classifying Neuchâtel’s natural-history museum collection stimulated his study of mollusks (shellfish). When he was 11, his notes on a rare part-albino sparrow were published, the first of hundreds of articles and over fifty books. Jean Piaget was born on August 9, 1896, in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, the son of a historian. The Swiss psychologist and educator Jean Piaget (1896–1980) is famous for his learning theories based on identifiable stages in the development of children’s intelligence.

The Psychology of Intelligence by Jean Piaget