A Study On The Piaget's Genetic Epistemology

Piaget is the founder of genetic epistemology, and his theory is influenced by the epistemology of Kant, the dialectics thoughts of Hegelian and the genealogical theory of Baldwin. Piaget's theory provides a new perspective to research the ideas of epistemology. In Piaget's opinion, the traditional epistemology only pays attention to the results of knowing, but the development of process of knowing is more important than that.The base of genetic epistemology is a research on the process of development of child's mind, because Piaget thought that the process of development of child's mind looks like the process of the development of human cognition; they are similar. On this basis, Piaget thought that the development of perception has four parts, it includes the perception movement stage, the former operational stage, the specific operational stage and the formal operational stage. Piaget thought that the structure is one of the characteristics of cognition, and the structure is a process of development of construction and it never stops. The theory of Piaget's structure is made up of many different kinds of conversion patterns, and the construction is a process of changing structure. The construction keeps changing and developing, so it is a spiral which is rising forever. The construction is a process of infinite development, and the construction affects the structure, so the stability and balance of structure is relative. In a word, our cognition is a process of development which is always rising. With the cognitive structure is becoming rich and perfect, we will know more about the objective world.The genetic epistemology discards the bad part of the traditional epistemology and reserves the good one. At the same time, it adds something that is ignored by Marxist epistemology. In addition, its dialectical thinking methods and features of study provide new angles and fields for our study on epistemology, and it makes us know more about human cognition.