ABSTRACT
WE saw in Chapter III how toward the age of 7, both linear and circular order become reversible and give rise to true operational correspondence. And in Chapter IV we have just seen how this notion enables knots to be understood as simple homeomorphs. Now at this point it is legitimate to ask whether such correspondences as are established between shapes by the age of 7 or 8 entail more than a crude, intuitive idea of continuity itself. For this reason, and also to conclude this brief survey of the psychology of elementary topological relations, we intend to examine the development of the notion of continuity, from the form in which it first appears to that which it exhibits when formal thought emerges at the age of 11 or 12.
