In genetic epistemology, as in developmental psychology, too, there is never an absolute beginning.
Knowing reality means constructing systems of transformations that correspond, more or less adequately, to reality.
The child is a realist in every domain of thought, and it is therefore natural that in the moral sphere he should lay more stress on the external, tangible element than on the hidden motive.
The essential functions of the mind consist in understanding and in inventing, in other words, in building up structures by structuring reality.
As you know, Bergson pointed out that there is no such thing as disorder but rather two sorts of order, geometric and living.
The most developed science remains a continual becoming.
I have always detested any departure from reality, an attitude which I relate to my mother’s poor mental health.
Scientific knowledge is in perpetual evolution; it finds itself changed from one day to the next.
In other words, knowledge of the external world begins with an immediate utilisation of things, whereas knowledge of self is stopped by this purely practical and utilitarian contact.
I could not think without writing.
If logic itself is created rather than being inborn, it follows that the first task of education is to form reasoning.
What the genetic epistemology proposes is discovering the roots of the different varieties of knowledge, since its elementary forms, following to the next levels, including also the scientific knowledge.
The current state of knowledge is a moment in history, changing just as rapidly as the state of knowledge in the past has ever changed and, in many instances, more rapidly.
To express the same idea in still another way, I think that human knowledge is essentially active.
Accommodation of mental structures to reality implies the existence of assimilatory schemata apart from which any structure would be impossible.
During the earliest stages of thought, accommodation remains on the surface of physical as well as social experience.
As far as the game of marbles is concerned, there is therefore no contradiction between the egocentric practice of games and the mystical respect entertained for rules. This respect is the mark of a mentality fashioned, not by free cooperation between equals, but by adult constraint.
Every acquisition of accommodation becomes material for assimilation, but assimilation always resists new accommodations.
The more the schemata are differentiated, the smaller the gap between the new and the familiar becomes, so that novelty, instead of constituting an annoyance avoided by the subject, becomes a problem and invites searching.
Logical positivists have never taken psychology into account in their epistemology, but they affirm that logical beings and mathematical beings are nothing but linguistic structures.