Piaget, Jean

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) was a Swiss philosopher-scientist. In 1918, he gained his PhD in biology from [Page 1242]his home university in Neuchâtel and published Recherche [Search] with a sketch of his epistemology (theory of knowledge). The insights explored in Recherche dominated the rest of his life in Geneva. Just as knowledge in the history of science has a history endlessly subjected to critical analysis, so too the knowledge of each individual person has a history continually amenable to a critique, not solely conscious, by the knower. His work, which included 80 authored/edited books and 500 papers, was usually published in French; one-third of it is still unavailable in English. He became the first European to receive the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in ...