Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

To properly understand Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, it is important to consider it within the larger context of his work. Although Piaget is recognized as one of the greatest developmental psychologists, he described his own work as “genetic epistemology.” Genetic (Greek genno = give birth) here refers to the origin and development of knowledge, rather than to genes, as the word is used today. The main goal of Piaget's epistemology was to explain the generativity and rigor of human knowledge. Generativity refers to novelty and invention, whereas rigor refers to logical necessity, that is, that an answer must necessarily and logically be true, could not be otherwise, and must universally hold to be true for all rational persons.

Even though Piaget also approached the ...