Jean Piaget: Biography Of The Father Of Evolutionary Psychology
The idea that we are not born with the same mental abilities that we have as adults probably won’t surprise anyone. The ability to understand the world, to take into account that objects and people continue to exist even though we cannot see them, to attribute intention and a mind of their own to others, to capture and interpret information from the environment, to make plans to solve or Establishing hypotheses is something that requires a process of maturational development and learning, with both biology and experience being involved in its emergence.
There are many authors who have investigated how different mental skills and abilities emerge throughout life, with Jean Piaget being one of the most influential and important examples of recent times in terms of the study of cognitive development. It is about this author that we are going to talk about in this article, making a brief biography of Jean Piaget
Jean William Fritz Piaget Jackson was born on August 9, 1896 in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He was the firstborn of medieval literature professor Arthur Piaget and Rebecca Jackson, daughter of the owner of France’s first crucible steel factory.
His childhood was spent in an academic environment, acquiring and learning from his father a critical and analytical mentality as well as the taste for writing and the fascination for living beings On the other hand, his relationship with his mother apparently was not easy or positive.
Already from childhood, Piaget showed signs of having a certain precocity, manifesting a great interest in mechanics, ornithology, mollusks and biology in general. He entered the Latino Institute in his town. While in high school at the age of ten, would prepare and submit an article about the alpine sparrow to a local natural history magazine this being his first contribution and scientific publication.
After that and during adolescence, a great interest in zoology and mollusks would awaken in the young man. He would come into contact with Paul Godel, director of the Museum of Natural History, whom he would become an assistant for four years and after which he would publish different articles on malacology. His publications would lead to him being offered a position at the Geneva Museum of Natural History which he could not occupy due to his young age (he had not yet completed his school years).
Years of training
After finishing secondary education, Piaget would begin studying at the University of Neuchâtel, graduating with a degree in Natural Sciences and receiving a doctorate in 1918 with a thesis related to malacology.
After that he would decide to study at the University of Zurich , where he studied for a semester and began to acquire interest in psychology based on the works of Freud and Jung. He began working in psychology laboratories in that city and would even publish two publications on the matter.
Link with child psychology
During that same year, 1919, Piaget would move to Paris as a professor of psychology and philosophy at the Sorbonne, knowing and working with a large number of important psychologists such as Binet or Bleuler He would also go to work at a school run by Binet and Simón as a teacher, in Grange-aux-Belles. There he would begin to notice differences between the response patterns of adults and children, something that would lead him to think about the existence of different processes attributable to certain evolutionary moments.
Shortly later, in 1920, he would be part of the group that perfected the Stern intelligence test, also detecting consistent errors in children’s responses. Together with Theodore Simon he would begin to explore children’s intelligence and reasoning
During 1921 he would publish his first article on intelligence, which would cause him to receive an offer to work as director of the Rousseau Institute in Geneva. With this offer, in which something that led him to return to his country of origin. From his position he would create various works in which reasoning, thinking or children’s language worked. His academic participation continued to grow, also attending the Berlin Congress of Psychoanalysis in 1922 (where he would meet Freud personally).
In 1923 he married Valentine Châteney, having three children with her. His fatherhood would be important not only on a personal level but also on a professional level since it would be the observation and analysis of the growth and development of his children that (along with the influence of various previous authors and the carrying out of the different studies mentioned above), would lead him to the development of his best-known work: the theory cognitive-evolutionary in which the different stages of development and constructivist theory will be explained.
In 1925 he would work as a philosophy professor at the University of his hometown, despite continuing at the Rousseau Institute. In addition, Together with his wife he would observe and analyze the development of his children During 1929 he returned to Geneva to work at the university of that city as a professor of psychology and history of science. Later he would go to the University of Lausanne. While he worked in the latter as a professor of psychology and sociology, in 1936 he would be appointed director of the International Bureau of Education of UNESCO. In 1940 he would begin to study aspects such as perception, working on aspects such as the development of spatial perception.
By 1950, Piaget would carry out the development of genetic epistemology, another of his great contributions, in which worked on cognitive structures and evolutionary and historical changes in the consciousness-environment relationship This contribution would lead to the generation of the cognitive schema concept and its constructivist theory in which it valued the biology-environment relationship in the formation of thought.
Five years later he founded and would be named director of the International Center for Genetic Epistemology, a position he would hold until his death. Throughout his life, Piaget would receive numerous honorary degrees and doctorates, as well as various international awards for his scientific contributions.
Death and legacy
Jean Piaget died at the age of 84 on September 16, 1980, in Geneva, after around ten days in hospital. His death is an event of great importance, His legacy and contribution to psychology being one of the most extensive and relevant of the last century
His theories on child development have influenced a large number of well-known authors such as Bruner, Bandura, Ausubel and Erikson, and they still continue to be valued and taken into account at a theoretical level. He especially highlights the importance of his cognitive-evolutionary theory on the development of cognitive abilities and in which he tells us about the different stages of development. However, this is not the only field in which he worked; he also made various contributions in fields such as sociology, philosophy or even biology.
