[[!meta title="The Psychology of Intelligence"]] * Author: Jean Piaget. * Publisher: Routledge Classics. * Year: 1950. ## References * [Piaget's theory of cognitive development - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget's_theory_of_cognitive_development). ## Overview This overview is a mixed of both ideas from the book altogether with other considerations I've got by reading other, related material: ### Intelligence is reversible! As what's really wonderful about this reversibility is that it's built atop of lower, fundamental levels of irreversible dynamical systems. That revesibility is the capacity to the adaptive system do turn away from configurations that doesn't lead to a defined goal and replace by other pathways, mixing introspection and empirism. Reading this book along with The Tree of Live from Maturana and Varella and Morin's Method I get the feeling that intelligence in life arises from the sensori-motor system and gets deeper in a process where the nervous system inflates to give way to impulses/stimuli that originates from itself. Consequential to this reversibility is that intelligence might experimentation freely without risking itself producing damages or permanent harm to itself, which is different to say that somebody can't harm him/herself by the consequence of his/her acts. Also, while what happens with intelligence looks entirely reversible, mind is not composed of intelligence alone. Other instances exist that might put the whole apparatus on restricted modes of operation, such when in a neurosis which is a state of constant looping in a given theme. ## Misc * Perception (imediate contact with the world) (127). * Habit: beyond short and rapidly automatised connections between per- ceptions and responses (habit) (127). ## Intelligence and equilibrium Then, if intelligence is thus conceived as the form of equilibrium towards which all cognitive processes tend, there arises the problem of its relations with perception (Chap. 3), and with habit (Chap. 4). -- Preface Every response, whether it be an act directed towards the outside world or an act internalized as thought, takes the form of an adaptation or, better, of a re-adaptation. The individual acts only if he experiences a need, i.e., if the equilibrium between the environment and the organism is momentarily upset, and action tends to re-establish the equilibrium, i.e., to re-adapt the organ- ism (Claparède). A response is thus a particular case of inter- action between the external world and the subject, but unlike physiological interactions, which are of a material nature and involve an internal change in the bodies which are present, the responses studied by psychology are of a functional nature and are achieved at greater and greater distances in space (percep- tion, etc.) and in time (memory, etc.) besides following more and more complex paths (reversals, detours, etc.). Behaviour, thus conceived in terms of functional interaction, presupposes two essential and closely interdependent aspects: an affective aspect and a cognitive aspect. -- 5 Furthermore, intelligence itself does not consist of an isolated and sharply differentiated class of cognitive processes. It is not, properly speaking, one form of structuring among others; it is the form of equilibrium towards which all the structures arising out of perception, habit and elementary sensori-motor mechan- isms tend. It must be understood that if intelligence is not a faculty this denial involves a radical functional continuity between the higher forms of thought and the whole mass of lower types of cognitive and motor adaptation; so intelligence can only be the form of equilibrium towards which these tend. This does not mean, of course, that a judgment consists of a co- ordination of perceptual structures, or that perceiving means unconscious inference (although both these theories have been held), for functional continuity in no way excludes diversity or even heterogeneity among structures. Every structure is to be thought of as a particular form of equilibrium, more or less stable within its restricted field and losing its stability on reach- ing the limits of the field. But these structures, forming different levels, are to be regarded as succeeding one another according to a law of development, such that each one brings about a more inclusive and stable equilibrium for the processes that emerge from the preceding level. Intelligence is thus only a generic term to indicate the superior forms of organization or equilibrium of cognitive structurings. -- 7 In general, we may thus conclude that there is an essential unity between the sensori-motor processes that engender per- ceptual activity, the formation of habits, and pre-verbal or pre- representative intelligence itself. The latter does not therefore arise as a new power, superimposed all of a sudden on com- pletely prepared previous mechanisms, but is only the expres- sion of these same mechanisms when they go beyond present and immediate contact with the world (perception), as well as beyond short and rapidly automatised connections between per- ceptions and responses (habit), and operate at progressively greater distances and by more complex routes, in the direction of mobility and reversibility. Early intelligence, therefore, is simply the form of mobile equilibrium towards which the mechanisms adapted to perception and habit tend; but the latter attain this only by leaving their respective fields of application. Moreover, intelligence, from this first sensori-motor stage onwards, has already succeeded in constructing, in the special case of space, the equilibrated structure that we call the group of displacements—in an entirely empirical or practical form, it is true, and of course remaining on the very restricted plane of immediate space. But it goes without saying that this organiza- tion, circumscribed as it is by the limitations of action, still does not constitute a form of thought. On the contrary, the whole development of thought, from the advent of language to the end of childhood, is necessary in order that the completed sensori- motor structures, which may even be co-ordinated in the form of empirical groups, may be extended into genuine operations, which will constitute or reconstruct these groupings and groups at the level of symbolic behaviour and reflective reasoning. -- 127-128 ## Logic and psychology An axiomatics is an exclusively hypothetico-deductive sci- ence, i.e., it reduces to a minimum appeals to experience (it even aims to eliminate them entirely) in order freely to reconstruct its object by means of undemonstrable propositions (axioms), which are to be combined as rigorously as possible and in every possible way. In this way geometry has made great progress, seeking to liberate itself from all intuition and constructing the most diverse spaces simply by defining the primary elements to be admitted by hypothesis and the operations to which they are subject. The axiomatic method is thus the mathematical method par excellence and it has had numerous applications, not only in pure mathematics, but in various fields of applied mathematics (from theoretical physics to mathematical economics). The use- fulness of an axiomatics, in fact, goes beyond that of demonstra- tion (although in this field it constitutes the only rigorous method); in the face of complex realities, resisting exhaustive analysis, it permits us to construct simplified models of reality and thus provides the study of the latter with irreplaceable dis- secting instruments. To sum up, an axiomatics constitutes a “pat- tern” for reality, as F. Gonseth has clearly shown, and, since all abstraction leads to a schematization, the axiomatic method in the long run extends the scope of intelligence itself. But precisely because of its “schematic” character, an axiomat- ics cannot claim to be the basis of, and still less to replace, its corresponding experimental science, i.e. the science relating to that sector of reality for which the axiomatics forms the pattern. Thus, axiomatic geometry is incapable of teaching us what the space of the real world is like (and “pure economics” in no way exhausts the complexity of concrete economic facts). No axi- omatics could replace the inductive science which corresponds to it, for the essential reason that its own purity is merely a limit which is never completely attained. As Gonseth also says, there always remains an intuitive residue in the most purified pattern (just as there is already an element of schematization in all intu- ition). This reason alone is enough to show why an axiomatics will never be the basis of an experimental science and why there is an experimental science corresponding to every axiomatics (and, no doubt, vice versa). -- page 30 It is true that in addition to the individual consistency of actions there enter into thought interactions of a collective order and consequently “norms” imposed by this collaboration. But co-operation is only a system of actions, or of operations, car- ried out in concert, and we may repeat the preceding argument for collective symbolic behaviour, which likewise remains at a level containing real structures, unlike axiomatizations of a formal nature. For psychology, therefore, there remains unaltered the prob- lem of understanding the mechanism with which intelligence comes to construct coherent structures capable of operational combination; and it is no use invoking “principles” which this intelligence is supposed to apply spontaneously, since logical principles concern the theoretical pattern formulated after thought has been constructed and not this living process of con- struction itself. Brunschvicg has made the profound observation that intelligence wins battles or indulges, like poetry, in a con- tinuous work of creation, while logico-mathematical deduction is comparable only to treatises on strategy and to manuals of “poetic art”, which codify the past victories of action or mind but do not ensure their future conquests. 1 -- page 34 ## Habit and sensori-motor intelligence Circular reaction: Let us imagine an infant in a cradle with a raised cover from which hang a whole series of rattles and a loose string. The child grasps this and so shakes the whole arrangement without expecting to do so or understanding any of the detailed spatial or causal rela- tions. Surprised by the result, he reaches for the string and carries out the whole sequence several times over. J. M. Baldwin called this active reproduction of a result at first obtained by chance a “circular reaction”. The circular reaction is thus a typ- ical example of reproductive assimilation. The first movement executed and followed by its result constitutes a complete action, which creates a new need once the objects to which it relates have returned to their initial stage; these are then assimilated to the previous action (thereby promoted to the status of a schema) which stimulates its reproduction, and so on. Now this mechan- ism is identical with that which is already present at the source of elementary habits except that, in their case, the circular reac- tion affects the body itself (so we will give the name “primary circular reaction” to that of the early level, such as the schema of thumb-sucking), whereas thenceforward, thanks to prehension, it is applied to external objects (we will call this behaviour affect- ing objects the “secondary circular reaction,” although we must remember that these are not yet by any means conceived as substances by the child). -- 110-112 Early intelligence: The routes between the subject and the object fol- lowed by action, and also by sensori-motor reconstitutions and anticipations, are no longer direct and simple pathways as at the previous stages: rectilinear as in perception, or stereotyped and uni-directional as in circular reactions. The routes begin to vary and the utilisation of earlier schemata begins to extend further in time. This is characteristic of the connection between means and ends, which henceforth are differentiated, and this is why we may begin to speak of true intelligence. But, apart from the continuity that links it with earlier behaviour, we should note the limitations of this early intelligence: there are no inventions or discoveries of new means, but simply application of known means to unforeseen circumstances. -- 114 Innovation: Two acquisitions characterise the next stage, both relating to the utilisation of past experience. The assimilatory schemata so far described are of course continually accommodated to external data. But this accommodation is, so to speak, suffered rather than sought; the subject acts according to his needs and this action either harmonizes with reality or encounters resist- ances which it tries to overcome. Innovations which arise for- tuitously are either neglected or else assimilated to previous schemata and reproduced by circular reaction. However, a time comes when the innovation has an interest of its own, and this certainly implies a sufficient stock of schemata for comparisons to be possible and for the new fact to be sufficiently like the known one to be interesting and sufficiently different to avoid satiation. Circular reaction, then, will consist of a reproduction of the new phenomenon, but with variations and active experimentation that are intended precisely to extract from it its new possibilities. -- 114 Topology: But there now arises a problem whose discussion leads to the study of space. Perceptual constancy is the product of simple regulations and we saw (Chap. 3) that the absence at all ages of absolute constancy and the existence of adult “superconstancy” provide evidence for the regulative rather than operational char- acter of the system. There is, therefore, all the more reason why it should be true of the first two years. Does not the construction of space, on the other hand, lead quite rapidly to a grouping structure and even a group structure in accordance with Poincaré’s famous hypothesis concerning the psychologically primary influence of the “group of displacements?” The genesis of space in sensori-motor intelligence is com- pletely dominated by the progressive organisation of responses, and this in effect leads to a “group” structure. But, contrary to Poincaré’s belief in the a priori nature of the group of dis- placements, this is developed gradually as the ultimate form of equilibrium reached by this motor organisation. Successive co-ordinations (combinativity), reversals (reversibility), detours (associativity) and conservations of position (identity) gradually give rise to the group, which serves as a necessary equilibrium for actions. At the first two stages (reflexes and elementary habits), we could not even speak of a space common to the various per- ceptual modalities, since there are as many spaces, all mutually heterogeneous, as there are qualitatively distinct fields (mouth, visual, tactile, etc.). It is only in the course of the third stage that the mutual assimilation of these various spaces becomes system- atic owing to the co-ordination of vision with prehension. Now, step by step with these co-ordinations, we see growing up elementary spatial systems which already presage the form of composition characteristic of the group. Thus, in the case of interrupted circular reaction, the subject returns to the starting- point to begin again; when his eyes are following a moving object that is travelling too fast for continuous vision (falling etc.), the subject occasionally catches up with the object by dis- placements of his own body to correct for those of the external moving object. But it is as well to realise that, if we take the point of view of the subject and not merely that of a mathematical observer, the construction of a group structure implies at least two conditions: the concept of an object and the decentralisation of movements by correcting for, and even reversing, their initial egocentricity. In fact, it is clear that the reversibility characteristic of the group presupposes the concept of an object, and also vice versa, since to retrieve an object is to make it possible for oneself to return (by displacing either the object itself or one’s own body). The object is simply the constant due to the reversible composition of the group. Furthermore, as Poincaré himself has clearly shown, the idea of displacement as such implies the possibility of differentiating between irreversible changes of state and those changes of position that are characterized precisely by their reversibility (or by their possible correction through movements of one’s own body). It is obvious, therefore, that without con- servation of objects there could not be any “group”, since then everything would appear as a “change of state”. The object and the group of displacements are thus indissociable, the one con- stituting the static aspect and the other the dynamic aspect of the same reality. But this is not all: a world with no objects is a universe with no systematic differentiation between subjective and external realities, a world that is consequently “adualistic” (J. M. Baldwin). By this very fact, such a universe would be centred on one’s own actions, the subject being all the more dominated by this egocentric point of view because he remains un-self-conscious. But the group implies just the opposite attitude: a complete decentralisation, such that one’s own body is located as one element among others in a system of displacements enabling one to distinguish between one’s own movements and those of objects. -- 123-125