Jean Piaget’s Genetic Epistemology as a Theory of Knowledge Based on Epigenesis

Abstract

This article aims to highlight Jean Piaget’s theory of knowledge and situate it in this context since its beginnings in Ancient Greece where, in Plato, we already find this seminal idea: knowledge is acquired in successive and upward moments (dialektikê), starting from an opinion on the sensible world (doxa) towards the épistêmê of the intelligible world, the world of Ideas or concepts. Piaget’s Theory of Knowledge, we believe, was determined by four moments: 1) his research as a malacologist under the guidance of Godet and Raymond, 2) the acquaintance with Kant’s philosophy at age of 21, 3) his internship at the Binet/Simon laboratory, 4) his studies on the Limnaea Stagnalis. His core idea: it is possible for human beings to attain the necessary and universal knowledge due to the exchange processes of their organisms with the environment, which give rise to the epigenetic ontogenesis of their specific organic mental structures, framed for the specific act of knowing. Epigenetic ontogenesis begins with the infans first actions in the world, from the very moment of birth. Around two years of age, these actions will be represented and organized in groups linked to empirical experience, until the brain be able to perform the operations of the Abelian Group. The physiological development ends here, and the logico-mathematical knowledge becomes possible.