PIAGET AND NATURAL LEARNING

Cognitive system,and it is this system which responds to disequiibrium by assimilation

and accomodation. The way the subject atributes meaning or signifance seems irrelevant.
Thus piaget seems to reduce knowledge to biological processes, or at the very least is obliged
to close the gap beetwen bioogy and meaningfull cognitin (see for exaple rotman). His
references to recapitulation, which assume that the laws off all developmental change are the
same, do not solve the problem but are part and parcel of it. According to this view, the
history of humandkind and individual cognitive development are evolutionary systems in
which all (inherent) possibilities are destined to come in to being by unfolding over time.
This unfolding or development is in a spesific direction, towards a higher, more perfect end
state, and is subject to a law of progress. The direction of change is not only necessary, but
takes the form of an ordered sequence of stages. The same general laws are thought to apply
not only to all organism, including human beings, but also to society, science, and the earth as
a whole. It is a developmental necessarianism in spencer`s sense, which is to say that is
neither an accident nor a thing within human control but rather a beneficent neccessity. This
idea of a general recapitulation in a form of a law of development seems to be accepted by
piaget and is the fundamental assumption of his theory. His empirical studies of children are
offered more to illustrate this than to test it. His theory seems to rest on questionable
metaphysical assumptions grounded in or inspired by pre-Darwinian biology, and also on
questionable views of both individual cognitive and scientific development, views that see
these following a single, necessary path, which also eliminates meaning or intentionality from
psychology. His theory is therefore not a theory of cognition or the mind
The two processes of assimilation and accomodation explain change, but not directed
change, and concepts like reflective abstraction are equivalent to rationality, thereby
assuming what is to be explained. Piaget`s account of development is a description of the
child`s changing behaviour in terms of the different sub-parts which, in the aggregate,allow
rationality to be described. He has committed the error that william wundt long ago warned
agains the tendency of psychologists to use logic and the accepted concepts of science or
rationality to characterise behaviour, and then to transfer this same logical language to the
level of psychological mechanisms as well.
piaget, in insisting that development occurs neccessarily along a sinle path also has to
claim that the entire process of development from infancy to scientific reasoning is fixed in a
way that is prior to any experience or constructive mental or other activity. It is not, however
fixed in the individual`s genetic endowment, but rather due to someuniversal bilogical laws
governing all life, and largely independent of social,cultural, or historical facts. Create a
natural learning situation and the resst will take care ot itself. The fundamental hypothesis of
genetic epistemologyis that there is a parallelism between the progress made in the logical
and rational organisation of knowledge and the corresponding formative psychological
processes`
Individual development and the way children learn have adult thinking as their goal, but
is this a processor similar to the infinite and unpredictable growth of scientific knowledge?
Are there really both an indisputable connection and parallelism between individual
development towards adult norms and the growth of science?
 To conclude, clearly piaget thinks that the productivity of cognitive change can be
explained in terms of the productivity and normativity of evolutionary laws, in the form of
functional invariants of development . this is unsatisfactory because he `solves` the problem
of productivity by creating an analogous one-the productivity and normativity of biological
laws of evolution.

Metaphysical history
Piaget fails to account for productivity, that is the normativity of cognitive development,
the steady progress in the individual as well as in science towards objectivity and certainty,
because he presupposes what he sets out to explain, namely rationality. His answer or rather
his failure to give an account for progressive cognitive change, nly makes sense if we put it in
the context of a sets of ideas which were widespread among intelectuals in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, and which were alluded to above. The idea of a necessary
progression as an assumption of any theory of development cannot be pressupposed because
it is itself in need of explanation. It is in this sense that piaget is more of a nineteenth-century
than a contenporary thinker. He like spencer, bergson, hegel, marx, comte, and freud, adopts
and evolutionary perspective. Although they were interested in different aspects of the
individual or society, they all shared the belief that life in all its manifestasion-from the
amoeba to human cognition to society and cultures-envolves according to laws and thst
evolution moves in a necessary and progressive direction. The term `metaphysical history`
capture the idea best, i think because it makes clear that the suppossition referred to is a
metaphysical one: it understands development in terms of a `essential nature` rather than
`appearance` that is necessary rather than contingent. Piaget`s basic orientation was clearly
evolutionary in this sense. For him, reality in all its form-the physical, biological,
psychological, social, and intelectual-is evolving progressively. Piaget takes external
behaviour and different organic and societal manifestations to be contingent, while he
functional invariants or evolutionary laws are part of an `essential nature`, rather than an
`appearance`.

CONCLUSION: NATURAL LEARNING AND PRODUCTIVITY

As we have seen above, piaget`s theory is used to support computer use in shools by
clairning that children have a natural, inborn motivation and ability to learn. As long as thi
inborn motivation and these inborn capacities to develop operate freely, children will learn.
Just claiming that learning something is natural according to biological laws, as piaget does,
does not help us. To claim that the process is in accordance with natural evolutionary laws
problematic, as i have argued. It says nothing about what this process is like and what
influences it. These accounts of learning and cognitive development seem to be traceable to
untenable, arguable, metaphysical, assumptions which go back to the beginning of
psychology, and include assumptions about evolution rejected by neo-Darwinians.
In the end piaget and the latural learning theorists who rely on im seem to accept the very
thing he criticises traditional epistemological theories for. Objectivity, truth, and necessity are
the starting points rather than the end point of development.this is so because piaget finds
necessity in developmental biological laws which arw `guiding` all change. Although he is
correct to criticise empiricism and rationalism for their static view of knowledge, in the end
he is unable to provide an acceptable alternative because he also seem to accept static
foundations as abasis of knowledge. To a certain extent, he accepts as well their view that
knowledge is generated or has its basis in the individual`s, internal, private mental and
biological abilities. I think that this idea of internalism and individualism is at the root of
another of piaget`s failures. Standards and norms are not private, individual entities, but
social and cultural ones, thus external to and ordering, rather than being ordered by, the
individual`s biological and mental endowments. This piaget`s failure to addres the social and
cultural origin of reason itself is problematic. This becomes even clearer in his account of the
framework, the topic to which we turn in the next chapter.