Swiss psychologist jean piaget (1896— 1980) is the founder of genetic epistemology. 19 18 received his Ph.D. from the university of nachter, Switzerland, and his thesis was entitled "mollusks in the Alps". Piaget was the director of the laboratory of Rousseau College of Geneva University from 192 1 and the professor of Geneva University from 1924. He was elected President of Swiss Psychological Society and French-speaking Federation of Psychological Sciences, and President of international union of psychological science from 65438 to 0954 14. In addition, Piaget has long served as the director of the International Education Bureau under the leadership of UNESCO and the assistant director-general of UNESCO. Piaget is also an honorary doctor or an honorary professor in many famous universities.

In order to devote himself to the study of genetic epistemology, Piaget founded the "International genetic epistemology Center" on 1955, and served as its director. He brought together famous philosophers, psychologists, educators, logicians, mathematicians, linguists and cybernetics scholars from all over the world to study genetic epistemology, and made a multidisciplinary and in-depth study of various concepts of children and the process and development of knowledge formation.

Piaget divided the development of children's thinking into four stages. These four stages are:

First, the stage of perceptual movement (from birth to about two years old). This stage is the embryonic stage of thinking and the foundation of future development. Piaget believes that the psychological development at this stage determines the whole process of psychological evolution in the future.

Second, the pre-performance stage (about two years old to about six or seven years old). This stage is also called the pre-logic stage, and children begin to describe the external world with symbols as the intermediary, which is manifested in children's delay in imitation, imagination or play.

Third, the specific performance stage (about six or seven years old to about eleven or twelve years old). At this stage, children have a general logical structure.

Fourth, the formal performance stage (about eleven or twelve years old to about fourteen or five years old). At this time, children's intellectual development tends to be mature, and their thinking ability has exceeded the specific content of things or perceived things, and their thinking has greater flexibility.

Piaget studied the development of children's language and thinking in his early days, and finally founded genetic epistemology from then on, leaving many valuable documents for later generations. Because of his profound knowledge and outstanding contribution, he was awarded the 1968 Outstanding Contribution Award in Psychology and the 1977 Thorndike Prize by the American Psychological Association in recognition of his contribution to educational psychology. 1972 won the honorary status equivalent to the Nobel Prize "Erasmus Prize" in the Netherlands.

Main works:

Children's Language and Thinking

Children's judgment and reasoning

Children's worldview

Children's Concept of Physical Causality

Children's moral judgment

The origin of children's wisdom

The composition of children's concept of reality

The formation of children's symbols

Wisdom psychology

The Development of Logical Thinking from Children to Teenagers

The early formation of children's logical thinking

Introduction to genetic epistemology

Genetic epistemology principle

structuralism