Piazhe. [Child`s Speech and Thinking. With an introductory article by Prof. L. Vygotsky]

Abstract:
[In his book «Child`s Speech and Thinking» (1932), Jean Piaget attempts to make general overview of all own studies as a whole, to bring them to some system, outline the connection between the individual factual results founded while studies, and reduce this complex variety of facts to unity. Piaget, relying on Rousseau views, stated that any child is not at all an any small adult, and his mind is not at all the small mind of an adult; thus he outlined the research problem of child`s thinking development. In his introductory article, L. Vygotsky welcomes Piaget`s approach to understanding the significance of the transnational level of scientific knowledge in different social environments in his theory of the development of children`s intellect. At the same time, Vygotsky sees in Piaget the shortcomings of his scientific approach, consisting in the avoidance of generalizations and fixation on «pure empiricism». L. Vygotsky also appreciates this distinctive feature of Piaget`s work for its scientific culture of analyzing psychological fact: «A sea of new facts, of the first and second magnitude, revealing the new and supplementing the known, has poured into child psychology from the pages of Piaget».]