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Nineteenth-century developmental psychologist Jean Piaget examines the child's notions of reality and causality at various stages of development.
A milestone of child psychology, The Child's Conception of the World explores the ways in which the reasoning powers of young children differ from those of adults.
Our encounters with the physical world are filled with miraculous puzzles-wind appears from somewhere, heavy objects (like oil tankers) float on oceans, yet smaller objects go to the bottom of our water-filled buckets. As adults, instead of confronting a whole world, we are reduced to driving from one parking garage to another. The Child's Conception of Physical Causality, part of the very beginning of the ground-breaking work of the Swiss naturalist Jean Piaget, is filled with creative experimental ideas for probing the most sophisticated ways of thinking in children. The strength of Piaget's research is evident in this collection of empirical data, systematically organized by tasks that illuminate how things work. Piaget's data are remarkably rich. In his new introduction, Jaan Valsiner observes that Piaget had no grand theoretical aims, yet the book's simple power cannot be ignored. Piaget's great contribution to developmental psychology was his "clinical method"-a tactic that integrated relevant aspects of naturalistic experiment, interview, and observation. Through this systematic inquiry, we gain insight into children's thinking. Reading Piaget will encourage the contemporary reader to think about the unity of psychological phenomena and their theoretical underpinnings. His wealth of creative experimental ideas probes into the most sophisticated ways of thinking in children. Technologies change, yet the creative curiosity of children remains basically unhindered by the consumer society. Piaget's data preserve the reality of the original phenomena. As such, this work will provide a wealth of information for developmental psychologists and those involved in the field of experimental science. Jean Piaget (1896-1980) is known for investigations of thought processes. He was professor at Geneva University (1929-1954) and director of the International Center for Epistemology (1955-1980). He is the author of The Language and Thought of the Child, Judgment and Reasoning in the Child, The Origin of Intelligence in Children, and The Early Growth of Logic in the Child. Jaan Valsiner is professor of psychology at Clark University, and a recognized authority on the life and work of Piaget.
First published in 1997. This Volume 4 of Jean Piaget's selected works and explores the study of the concept of space, or rather, of the innumerable ideas involved in the concept of space, which Piaget sees is for many reasons an indispensable part of child psychology.
Excerpt from The Child's Conception of the World Hence it is not merely useful but essential, first to examine the methods to be employed in studying these beliefs. To judge of the logic of children it is often enough simply to talk with them or to observe them among them selves. To arrive at their beliefs requires a special method which, it must be confessed outright, is not only difficult and tedious, but demands also an outlook, the fruit of at least one or two full vears' training. Mental specialists, trained in clinical practice, will immediately appreciate the reason. In order to assess a child's statement at its true worth the most minute precautions are necessary. Some account of these precautions must now be given, since if the reader ignores them he is likely to falsify completely the meaning of the pages which follow and, moreover, to mismanage the experiments should he, as we hope, decide to check them by repeating them himself. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
