The Mechanisms of Peception

Piaget, Jean1969

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Summary

This book marks both a departure from, and a continuation of, Piaget's earlier studies into the acquisition of knowledge by the child studies which he has labelled Genetic Epistemology. The book forms a natural element in that endeavour, in that it deals with the epistemological role of perception. Piaget rejects both the empiricist (geneticism with-out structure) and the apriorist (structuralism without genesis) positions and develops instead an account of perception which is interactionist and active: whereas the structures of perception (field effects, for example) may have certain similarities with those of intelligence, and appear to prefigure them, Piaget argues, with much experimental support, that the roots of knowledge cannot lie in perception. On the contrary, it is developing intelligence, arising in sensory-motor activity, which has repercussions upon perception, through 'perceptual activities' which themselves arise in sensory-motor activities. This new and fundamentally important concept is developed in great detail. The book departs from the Piaget tradition in its early chapters. In these, Piaget summarizes a massive series of laboratory investigations into optico-geometric illusions which he, with Marc Lambercier and others, conducted between 1940 and 1960. As usual, genetic trends are studied, but now in the context of fairly conventional experimental techniques. A new and perhaps unique account of the mechanisms underlying the perception of optico-geometric figures, a unitary theory of illusion, emerges.