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268 Jean Piaget
ical about the explanation. It none the less leads to a remarkable form of
psychological structuralism, of which Lewin has brought out the causal aspect
as much as the spatial aspect.
The most common current trend, however, is of course towards cybernetic
or ‘simulation’ models of all kinds of mental activities implying regulation, especially
as regards activities of a higher order. From Grey Walter’s ‘tortoise’ Nora,
which brings in conditioning, and from the ‘perceptron’ of Rosenblatt (whose
theory, moreover, is still the subject of debate) to Ashby’s homeostat and to S.
Papert’s ‘genetron’ projects (model advancing by successive stages towards
equilibration, like the development of the child), a great deal of extremely
instructive experimental work is being carried out at present in connexion with
the structures of learning and the intelligence.
A cybernetic model always involves a combination of probabilist sectors and
algebraic logical factors. It is therefore natural to use as a model the logical
processes themselves, as is done systematically by the Geneva school, not in the
sense of an already constructed, and therefore static, ideal externally imposed
on thought (which was the tendency of German Denkpsychologie), but as a
hierarchy of structures capable of guiding the psychological search for constructions
and relationships. The great advantage with such a model is that it
makes it possible to analyse constituent processes and not just the results or
performance, as is often the case with other models. It is often objected by psychologists
that this method relates to logicism and no longer to pure psychology.
However, just as an experimentalist cannot be charged with ‘dabbling in
mathematics’ if he resorts to the calculus of probability or algebraic functions
of some kind, so he cannot be said to be ‘dabbling in logic’ if he resorts to
Boolean algebra or other general structures (structures of order, and so on),
which come into the study of logic. The main objection of logicians is that the
‘logic of the subject’ has nothing to do with logic itself or the logic of logicians.
While this goes without saying, there is nonetheless a problem here, as we shall
see shortly.
However staunchly optimistic the tone of this part of our paper may be, in
which we take our stand partly on hopes and not just on victories already won, it
is necessary to realize the probable limits of structuralism, which are connected
with those of psychology in general in relation to differential psychology. This
latter branch of psychology raises theoretical problems, which are as important
as those that it has to account for in applied psychology, and problems which
neither factorial analysis nor the many tests of typology (the success of which
is as yet fairly relative) have yet been able to circumscribe. One of these problems,
for example, is the problem of genius, for while it is still an unsolved
question of general psychology how scientific or artistic creation operates, it
is an even greater mystery to understand what constitutes the secret uniqueness
of an individual creator. It is when we find ourselves in close touch with such
questions that we best realize the probable limits of structuralism: whereas
Newton, Bach and Rembrandt, when they were children, probably went through
stages of development, the possible structures of which we can form an idea,
and whereas it is or will be possible perhaps to explain their creative work by