(The term genetic in Piaget’s parlance was a synonym for developmental.įrom the perspective of the early 21st century, three criticisms of Piaget’s work stand out. Throughout his career, he described himself as a “genetic epistemologist,” which is an apt description for someone who endeavored to trace the nature and origin of knowledge from sensory-motor actions in infancy to formal cognition and logical operations in adulthood. Piaget claimed in the interview that all the problems he had undertaken had been epistemological. In Haggbloom’s empirical scheme, Piaget ranked second in professional journal citations (after Sigmund Freud) and fourth in citations for introductory psychology textbooks (after Sigmund Freud, B. (2002), invariably place Piaget in the top tier. Various attempts to identify the most eminent psychologists of the 20th century, such as that of Steven Haggbloom et al. However, despite the hyperbole, it is clear that Piaget was an extraordinarily important contributor to the philosophical underpinnings of psychology. The interviewer, Elizabeth Hall, began with an ingratiating statement:“You and Sigmund Freud are regarded as the two giants of 20th-century philosophy.”This statement by itself must be viewed as extreme hyperbole because she puts Piaget’s philosophical role above that of - to name only a few - Ludwig Wittgenstein, John-Paul Sartre, Karl Marx, and William James. This commentary considers some of these aspects in the context of Piaget’s legacy for contemporary psychology. The interview captured many facets of Piaget’s remarkable career: his roots in epistemology and natural history his interests in the underlying processes of intelligence and reasoning, the development of morality, and the theoretical basis within developmental psychology for educational practices and his comparisons between his theory and other major theoretical positions of the day. During that year, the international Jean Piaget Society was formed, and the society, as well as Piaget’s influence, endure.

The Psychology Today interview with Jean Piaget took place in 1970 at the height of his influence.

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