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[[!meta title="The Psychology of Intelligence"]]
* Author: Jean Piaget
## 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.
## 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
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