ABSTRACT
When in 1920–21 Piaget carried out his initial research in genetic psychology with the idea of testing a conception of life, of thought, and of existence developed during his adolescence, he could not have foreseen either the extraordinary fecundity or the extent of the empirical 1 and theoretical results that the field of study thereby discovered was going to bring him. A considerable work, which dealt with four major disciplines, was born in fact from the initial querying of the learned philosopher and from the answers that he could give thanks to the research procedures created for this purpose. The following pages can only give a very general and schematic glimpse of the immensity of the work, of the great number of insights that it was able to bring to many – and often the most fundamental – aspects of biological, psychological (intellectual and moral), and social life. I will try to retrace here the major steps in the construction of the work and of its parts and show how its organic character reflects the author’s theses.
