Brief introduction of genetic epistemology.

Genetic epistemology (genetic epistemology). Piaget put forward the theory of epistemology on the basis of Geneva School's research on children's psychological development and other disciplines' research on epistemology. It tries to explain cognition, especially scientific cognition, from the historical and social roots of cognition, the concepts on which cognition is based and the psychological origin of "operation". Therefore, it has two basic characteristics: ① To study human cognition with the viewpoint and method of genetics, emphasizing the individual psychological origin and historical development of cognition. Piaget believes that traditional epistemology only pays attention to the advanced level and final result of cognition, while modern epistemology is devoted to the logical analysis or linguistic analysis of cognition, which is not enough and needs to be supplemented by studying the psychological occurrence of cognition. He came to an epistemological conclusion mainly from biology and through the bridge of psychology. (2) genetic epistemology is not or just a traditional epistemology, but a study of epistemology in various sciences. This requires the cooperation of experts from various disciplines. Therefore, genetic epistemology is an interdisciplinary theory. Jean piaget (1896— 1980), a Swiss psychologist and founder of genetic epistemology, founded the International genetic epistemology Center in Geneva on 1955 and served as its director, bringing together famous philosophers, psychologists, educators, logicians, mathematicians, linguists and.

He combined biology with epistemology and logical communication through children's psychology, thus transforming traditional epistemology into empirical experimental science. He is the chairman of Swiss Psychological Society, French Psychological Federation and the 4th international union of psychological science. 1966 was elected as an academician of the National Academy of Sciences, and 1969 was awarded the Outstanding Scientific Contribution Award by the American Psychological Association. Some conclusions of genetic epistemology can be drawn from Piaget's detailed description of cognitive development stages.

(1) Human cognition originates from activity, which is internalized into reversible computing activity (intrinsic activity). Operation is a concept borrowed by Piaget from logic and mathematics, which shows that children's thinking is not chaotic, but organized.

② There is a transitional stage of imagery thinking and intuitive thinking between activities and concrete operations, in which symbolic activities play an important role in internalizing children's various perceptual movement patterns into images and learning languages.

(3) Before children master a language, they master categories and relationships through assimilation, adaptation and the gradual complication of assimilation. Language and thinking do not happen at the same time, but develop in parallel. Language contributes to internalization of behavior and symbolization and formalization of cognition. When children's thinking reaches the operational stage, thinking and language are interrelated, assimilated and coordinated. The finer the thinking structure, the more language is needed. High-level operation structure is expressed in language.

④ Thinking does not originate from language, but the more intelligence develops, the greater the importance of language. Language is a communication tool, which can strengthen children's egocentrism and is conducive to the social transmission of knowledge.

⑤ Children's initial concepts are pre-concepts (concepts that can't be defined quantitatively by "all" and "some") and pre-relationships (concepts have no relativity), and later developed to be able to distinguish individuals and classes stably.

⑥ Operation is characterized by transitivity and reversibility of classification and relation. The most obvious example is the development of the concept of conservation. The difference between concrete operation and formal operation is that the former cannot be divorced from concrete things and can only be applied to concrete things. When it is difficult for children to solve the same problem with language, it belongs to the primary logical thinking stage. These operations cannot be combined into a unified whole. Formal operation can "liberate form from content", at this time children can make assumptions and make inferences, which is an advanced stage of abstract thinking.

⑦ The logical structure and mathematical structure in adult thinking come from the general coordination of children's actions, from the classification, serialization and corresponding actions of children. The so-called mathematical matrix structure (algebraic structure, sequential structure and topological structure) of Bourbaki School has its natural roots in the development of children's thinking. The theoretical core of Piaget's psychology is "genetic epistemology". It mainly studies human cognition (the occurrence and structure of cognition, intelligence, thinking and psychology).

He believes that human knowledge, no matter how profound and complicated; Can be traced back to childhood. It can even be traced back to the embryonic period. After the birth of a child, how cognition is formed, how intellectual thinking develops, what factors are restricted, what is its internal structure, and how different levels of intelligence and thinking structure appear one after another, and so on. In the history of psychology, Gestalt School first studied psychology from the perspective of structure. It mainly seeks the structure of perception (gestalt or gestalt), denies the existence of feeling, and emphasizes that the whole is greater than the sum of parts. Piaget accepted some views of Gestalt School, but opposed its genius theory, accusing the school of not caring about the origin of perceptual structure. He tried to explain that structure has universal regulating function and controls people's experience and actions, and the coherence of individual psychology is the performance of a few universal structures.

Piaget's so-called structure is different from the gestalt structure of Gestalt School. Piaget's structure does not refer to anything or belief, but refers to several sets of coherent psychological operations or activities, which can be applied to things, beliefs or anything else in the individual psychological space. For example, the belief in the conservation of matter when the shape of an object changes is not a structure, but the collection of psychological operations (operations) to realize this belief is a structure. Piaget didn't claim that all the 8-year-old children in the world spontaneously discovered the conservation of matter, but only said that children formed a set of psychological operations or calculations that could make this discovery. When they met a problem that could be solved by using this set of calculations, they solved the problem.

Another feature of Piaget's structuralism is that he not only tries to prove that a large number of different behaviors indicate the existence of the same structure at a certain stage of development, but also tries to prove how the structure changes from one stage to another. This shows that Piaget's aim is to establish a developing or occurring structuralism. This is what distinguishes him from other structuralists.

Piaget also made a choice about behaviorism. He opposes behaviorism's associationism and essentialism, disagrees with behaviorism's view of denying the existence of consciousness, but agrees to start with behavior. Behaviorism does not deny the structure of elements, but thinks that structure is only the sum of elements and does not have the three characteristics Piaget said. Structuralism is also different from system theory: system theory recognizes that everything has structure, but only cares about analyzing the relationship between structures in a system; Structuralism requires efforts to find a more general structure, and those seemingly independent structures are different manifestations of this big structure. Of course, system theory and structuralism are not contradictory, they complement each other. Piaget doesn't seem to say much about constructivism in theory, only that it is a process similar to dialectics, that is, from the topic to the opposite topic, and finally to the topic, but what he emphasizes is not the struggle and unity of opposites, the negation of negation or the mutual change of quality, but the balance. He emphasized that the structure of thinking is the result of the interaction between subject and object, which is formed by the continuous self-construction of subject. Therefore, he opposed both external cause theory and internal cause theory, and advocated the combination of internal and external causes. In psychology, he opposes empiricism, association theory, pre-formation theory or congenital theory, and advocates post-formation theory, that is, human cognition is the result of the interaction between internal and external factors and the interaction between subject and object after birth. But Piaget's so-called interaction is different from the interaction between heredity and environment in psychology. First of all, he thinks that intelligence is not something that can measure "weight" (he thinks standardized intelligence test is "a complete disaster in education"), but a structure that must be described and its function must be understood. Secondly, it is generally believed that heredity and environment are only two fixed factors that affect the formation of intelligence, and they do not affect each other; Piaget, on the other hand, thinks that they are all "vectors" and their influence on the formation of intelligence is constantly changing, which depends on the cognitive structure of the subject. He further believes that the environment is not a stimulus that occasionally acts on children and causes reactions, but that children actively seek something that they can respond meaningfully, and the initiative belongs to children. The role of the environment is not specific, but different. A child can see through experience what is necessary for his intellectual development and what he can absorb at a certain period. The so-called construction means that children themselves must repeatedly form the basic concepts and logical thinking forms that constitute their intelligence. Piaget emphasized the concept of children's creation. Instead of discovering ideas, I don't think ideas exist in the world in advance, waiting for children to discover them, but children create them themselves. This distinguishes him from empiricism and transcendentalism. Piaget's book is called Children's Construction of Reality.

However, Piaget's constructivism goes further than the general educator who holds the child-centered theory. It transcends the general logicism, and does not only use logical models to describe the various stages of children's psychological development, but advocates that the role of logic in each stage of development determines the cognitive structure of the next stage. So some people use logical determinism to describe Piaget's thought. Therefore, Piaget genetic epistemology's basic viewpoints can be summarized as: interaction theory, constructive role and logical determinism.