Jean Piaget: biography of the father of Evolutionary Psychology

The idea that we are not born with the same mental capacities that we are in adulthood probably comes as no surprise to 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, capture and interpret information from the environment, develop plans to solve or establish hypotheses It 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 abilities and capacities emerge throughout life, being Jean Piaget is one of the most influential and important examples of recent times in the study of cognitive development. It is about this author that we are going to talk about in this article, making a short biography of Jean Piaget.

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Short biography of Jean Piaget

Jean William Fritz Piaget Jackson was born on August 9, 1896 in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He was the first-born of the professor of medieval literature Arthur Piaget and Rebecca Jackson, daughter of the owner of the first crucible steel factory in France.

His childhood was spent in an academic environment, acquiring and learning from his father a critical and analytical mindset as well as a taste for writing and a fascination for living things. By contrast, his relationship with his mother was apparently neither easy nor positive.

Already from childhood Piaget showed signs of having a certain precocity, showing a great interest in mechanics, ornithology, mollusks and biology in general. He entered the Latino Institute of his locality. While in high school at the age of ten, he would write and submit an article on the Alpine sparrow to a local natural history magazine, this being his first contribution and his 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, of whom he would go on to make as an assistant for four years and after which he published different articles on malacology. His publications would cause him to be offered a position at the Museum of Natural History in Geneva., which he could not get to occupy due to his young age (he had not yet finished his school stage).

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Years of training

After finishing his secondary education, Piaget went to study at the University of Neuchâtel, graduating in Natural Sciences and obtaining his doctorate in 1918 with a thesis on the malacology.

After that he decided to study at the University of Zurich, where for a semester he studied and began to acquire interest in psychology from the works of Freud or Jung. He began working in psychology laboratories in that city and would even make two publications about it.

Link with child psychology

During that same year 1919 Piaget would move to Paris as professor of psychology and philosophy at the Sorbonne, knowing and he working with a large number of important psychologists such as Binet or Bleuler. He would also go to work in 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.

A short time later, in 1920, he would be part of the group that perfected Stern's intelligence test by also detecting consistent errors in children's responses. Together with Theodore Simon he would begin to explore childhood intelligence and reasoning.

During the year 1921 he would publish a 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 develop various works in which he worked on reasoning, thinking or children's language. 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 which (together with the influence of various previous authors and the performance of different studies mentioned above), would lead him to the elaboration of his best-known work: the cognitive-evolutionary theory in which he will expose the different stages of development and the theory constructivist.

In 1925 he would work as a professor of philosophy 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 their children. During the year 1929 he would return to Geneva to work at the university of that city as a professor of psychology and history of science. Later he would go on to the University of Lausanne. While he exerted 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 began to study aspects such as perception, working on aspects such as the development of spatial perception.

By 1950 Piaget would carry out the elaboration 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 his constructivist theory in which he valued the biology-environment relationship in the formation of thought.

Five years later he founded and would be appointed director of the International Center for Genetic Epistemology, a position he would hold until his death. Piaget would receive throughout his life numerous honorary degrees and doctorates, as well as various international awards for his scientific contributions.

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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, being his legacy and his contribution to psychology one of the most extensive and relevant of the last century.

His theories of child development have influenced a large number of such well-known authors such as Bruner, Bandura, Ausubel or Erikson, and they are still being valued and taken into account at the theoretical. He especially highlights the importance of his cognitive-evolutionary theory, on the development of cognitive abilities and in which he talks about the different stages of development. However, this is not the only field in which he worked but he also made various contributions in fields such as sociology, philosophy or even biology.

Bibliographic references:

• Cellenieror, G. (1978) The Thought of Piaget, study and anthology of texts. Peninsula Editions, Barcelona.
• Cortés, M.I. and Tlaseca, M. (2004). Jean Piaget Monograph. National Pedagogical University. Mexico DF.