Insights and Illusions of Philosophy Quotes

“I know some very intelligent philosophers, not at all dogmatic, who believe that “science” cannot introduce the concept of finality in the analysis and explanation of vital processes, but that “philosophy” equally cannot arrive at an adequate concept of organic life without introducing finality. It is not a question here of moral or other values, but rather of a concept peculiar to philosophical biology as opposed to biology. Indeed, one such philosopher concluded, drawing inspiration from Merleau-Ponty, that science can “never” give an adequate explanation of the concept of the “whole structure” of the organism.”
― Jean Piaget, Insights and Illusions of Philosophy

“theory or have remained unaffected by them. It is true that a fact can sometimes appear to resemble an “accident,” as in the case of the apple that fell near Newton, but the accident only became a “fact” because Newton asked certain questions.”
― Jean Piaget, Insights and Illusions of Philosophy

“A fact is first an answer to a question. If Sartre had consulted psychologists before judging them in the light of his own genius, he would have learned that they do not wait on the accident but begin by setting themselves problems.”
― Jean Piaget, Insights and Illusions of Philosophy

“Piaget is also concerned with attempts of Maine de Biran, Bergson, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty to construct a philosophical psychology as opposed to a scientific empirical psychology. He believes that the difference between philosophical psychology and scientific psychology lies neither in the fact that the former concerns itself with “essences” (Husserl), with “irrationality” (Sartre), nor in its use of introspection. He sees the difference as being one rather of method: philosophical psychology neglects objective verification and grounds itself in subjectivity, although claiming to arrive at objective knowledge through intuition.”
― Jean Piaget, Insights and Illusions of Philosophy

“Piaget’s work shows that our concepts of logic, space, time, number, quantity, etc., are not given readymade as Kant thought, but undergo a process of development.”
― Jean Piaget, Insights and Illusions of Philosophy

“This new philosophical psychology can in this respect be traced back to Maine de Biran, for even if in his time scientific psychology was unaware of its autonomy, and even if Biranian psychology was only critical of that of the empiricists, Biran believed in the Kantian distinction of noumena and phenomena and took care to limit his inquiry to the latter alone, which did not prevent him from extending it in the form of idealist speculations.”
― Jean Piaget, Insights and Illusions of Philosophy

“I … sent a program of research to the Rockefeller Foundation. … [Their] questions were almost all of a surprising pertinence. I remember the practical questions … But I particularly remember the theoretical questions, due among others to [Shannon] Weaver, the mathematician interested in information theory who was then in charge of the Department of Science at the Foundation: How will you find interesting epistomological ideas, for example, the theory of relativity, in studying children who know nothing and who in any case are brought up in the intellectual tradition dating from Newton? …

I had the luck to be able to remark … that Einstein himself had advised me in 1928 to study the formation of the intuitions of velocity in order to see if they depended on those of duration, and that further, when I had the good fortune to see Einstein again at Princeton …, he was quite delighted by the reactions of nonconservation of children of four to six years (they deny that a liquid conserves its quantity when it is poured from one glass into another of a different shape: ‘There is more to drink than before,‘ etc.), and was greatly astonished that the elementary concepts of conservation were only constructed toward seven or eight years.”
― Jean Piaget, Insights and Illusions of Philosophy: Selected Works vol 9

“for example, to see whether in the developing subject, i.e. the child, integers are directly constructed starting from class logic by biunivocal correspondence and the construction of a “class of equivalent classes” as Frege and B. Russell thought, or whether the construction is more complex and presupposes the concept of order.”
― Jean Piaget, Insights and Illusions of Philosophy

“To expect a fact, is by definition to expect the isolated, it is for positivism, to prefer the ‘accident’ to the essential, the contingent to the necessary, disorder to order; it is in principle to reject the essential in the future:”
― Jean Piaget, Insights and Illusions of Philosophy

“For someone who constantly comes across this problem in the course of his professional activities, the question whether philosophy has the status of a “wisdom” or of a form of “knowledge” peculiar to itself is no longer an unnecessary or simply a theoretical problem; it is a vital question, since it affects the success or failure of thousands of scholars.”
― Jean Piaget, Insights and Illusions of Philosophy