'Mesogeny' (Milieu-Mediated Maturation) Versus Endogeny: A Crucial Underemphasis in Piaget's 'Internally-Caused' Phases.
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| Title: | 'Mesogeny' (Milieu-Mediated Maturation) Versus Endogeny: A Crucial Underemphasis in Piaget's 'Internally-Caused' Phases. |
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| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Burger, Henry G. |
| Peer Reviewed: | N |
| Page Count: | 40 |
| Publication Date: | 1982 |
| Document Type: | Opinion Papers |
| Descriptors: | Adolescent Development, Child Development, Cultural Influences, Developmental Stages, Environmental Influences, Epistemology, Intellectual Development |
| Abstract: | The author credits Piaget for giving an operational definition of deduction and for his descriptions of child behavior. But he states that the latter apply only to white, middle-class urban youths in Switzerland in the first half of the 20th century and cannot support Piaget's claims about invariant stages of intellectual development for all youths in all cultures. The author characterizes Piaget's 50 books and 160 articles as overlapping and contradictory, still obscure despite a vast flood of supportive literature by others. Piaget's theory of development is described as static, unscientific, and internally inconsistent, comparable to the medieval theory of phlogiston. While Burger states that the theory is mainly definitional and therefore mostly untestable, he alludes to 29 propositions derived from Piaget which have been contradicted by 150 field reports from over three dozen cultures. He attributes the continuing popularity of Piaget's theory to the current fascination with childhood and science and to an intellectual vacuum that exists for explaining learning. The alternative to Piaget proposed but not elaborated is a cultural theory of learning that admits a wide diversity in patterns or sequences of intellectual development in different cultures. This is variously referred to as cultural anthropology, cognitive anthropology, and mesogeny, the latter a coined term indicating a relationship between biological inheritance and environment, between nature and nurture, that resembles Darwinian evolution. (IM) |
| Entry Date: | 1982 |
| Accession Number: | ED219297 |
| Database: | ERIC |
| Abstract: | The author credits Piaget for giving an operational definition of deduction and for his descriptions of child behavior. But he states that the latter apply only to white, middle-class urban youths in Switzerland in the first half of the 20th century and cannot support Piaget's claims about invariant stages of intellectual development for all youths in all cultures. The author characterizes Piaget's 50 books and 160 articles as overlapping and contradictory, still obscure despite a vast flood of supportive literature by others. Piaget's theory of development is described as static, unscientific, and internally inconsistent, comparable to the medieval theory of phlogiston. While Burger states that the theory is mainly definitional and therefore mostly untestable, he alludes to 29 propositions derived from Piaget which have been contradicted by 150 field reports from over three dozen cultures. He attributes the continuing popularity of Piaget's theory to the current fascination with childhood and science and to an intellectual vacuum that exists for explaining learning. The alternative to Piaget proposed but not elaborated is a cultural theory of learning that admits a wide diversity in patterns or sequences of intellectual development in different cultures. This is variously referred to as cultural anthropology, cognitive anthropology, and mesogeny, the latter a coined term indicating a relationship between biological inheritance and environment, between nature and nurture, that resembles Darwinian evolution. (IM) |
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