Theory
Jean Piaget defined himself as a 'genetic' epistemologist, interested in the process of the qualitative development of knowledge. As he says in the introduction of his book Genetic Epistemology (ISBN 978-0-393-00596-7): "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."
He believed answers for the epistemological questions at his time could be answered, or better proposed, if one looked to the genetic aspect of it, hence his experimentations with children and adolescents. Piaget considered cognitive structures development as a differentiation of biological regulations. In one of his last books, Equilibration of Cognitive Structures: The Central Problem of Intellectual Development (ISBN 978-022666781), he intends to explain knowledge development as a process of equilibration using two main concepts in his theory, assimilation and accommodation, as belonging not only to biological interactions but also to cognitive ones.
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Famous quotes containing the word theory:
“We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall—which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“There is in him, hidden deep-down, a great instinctive artist, and hence the makings of an aristocrat. In his muddled way, held back by the manacles of his race and time, and his steps made uncertain by a guiding theory which too often eludes his own comprehension, he yet manages to produce works of unquestionable beauty and authority, and to interpret life in a manner that is poignant and illuminating.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Don’t confuse hypothesis and theory. The former is a possible explanation; the latter, the correct one. The establishment of theory is the very purpose of science.”
—Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)