ABSTRACT
What was the historical context at the heart of which Jean Piaget’s thought emerged? The first part of this work aims at sketching a view of Neuchâtel at the beginning of the twentieth century in order to give an idea of Piaget’s family background, his school milieu, and his friends and masters who would become his interlocutors in science well as in philosophy. In the second part, we will address the intellectual context of his century in order to understand how Jean Piaget fits into the extraordinary scientific blossoming that, in the second half of the twentieth century, extended beyond his native city and country to embrace France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and later, beyond his linguistic range, the whole of Europe and North America. Piaget was able to make extensive contacts throughout the world owing to his university life and his personal travels. Correspondence, congresses, and lecturing opened the path for ideas to circulate which then instigated challenge and debate. Piaget actively participated in such events by adding his observations and analyses and thus contributed to reformulating certain questions and to ignoring others.
