ABSTRACT
Jean Piaget was born on 9 August 1896 in Neuchatel, Switzerland. He gained his Ph.D. in biology from his local university in 1918, when he also published an intellectual novel, Recherche. This seminal text set out Piaget's research programme. Science is factual and religion is value-laden. Their accounts of reality are often incompatible. Human actions have both causal and normative properties. Norms are not innate. Although some norms are cultural, intellectual norms – such as knowledge entails the truth of what is known – are not cultural. Cultural beliefs can be false. An 'action logic' is not the same as a 'mental logic'. Metacognition is at issue in that structures control actions, even if the knower is not conscious of this action-regulation. This control includes a normative element in virtue of its dual function, as an intellectual tool generative of truth, and in the construction of better tools.
