Chronobiology - Part Four

Eventually, toward the end of the child's second year of life, the child will show signs of employing tertiary circular reactions which do not depend on a preliminary period of trial and error as a prelude to solving a problem. In these instances, a solution to a problem appears to emerge from the performance of purely mental operations, without any mediating physical activity.

Consequently, by the end of the sensorimotor period or stage of development, the child has begun to exhibit the essential feature of operational thinking. This essential feature is the capacity to manipulate and modify action schemata without necessarily having to resort to overt, physical activity.

The emergence of operational thinking in the child, according to Piaget, marks a major transition in the character of the way the child engages experience. On the one hand, the child is no longer restricted to thinking about events strictly in terms of what has been observed to be the case with respect to such events.

The child can begin to think about objects and events in terms of their potential for being other than they have been observed to be. In other words, the potential for manipulating and modifying a situation (through the intervention of the child's mentally operating on that situation and, thereby, conceptually constructing something different than what had been the case) assumes increasing importance in the thinking of the child.

A second facet of the transition in thinking brought about by operational activity is the child's growing capacity to think about the world in an integrated, unified and connected way. Piaget believes that prior to operational thinking, the child treats experience as a sort of loosely connected sum of events.

After operational thinking makes its appearance, however, the child develops a set of concepts involving object permanence, space, time, causality, and so on. These new concepts form the basis of the individual's understanding of, and interaction with, the world.

One of the formative influences on Piaget's thinking was Jules Henri Poincare. Among other things, Poincare held that the idea of space was an innate part of human thinking. Moreover, he believed our innate sense of space exhibited the properties of a mathematical group.

Piaget assimilated Poincare's approach to space to his own way of thinking about things. Thus, rather than treating space as an a priori concept, as Poincare had, Piaget maintained that the individual's concept of space was a construct which was the integrated result of a whole series of physical and interiorized activities involving the child's interaction with the surrounding environment.

Piaget not only modified Poincare's position concerning the a priori nature of space, he was interested in extending his idea concerning the individual's construction of reality to a whole set of basic concepts previously considered to have a priori origins. In other words, Piaget's proposal, if accepted, would overturn Kant's position concerning, in addition to the idea of space, the a priori nature of concepts such as time, causality, and so on.

Piaget referred to these constructed concepts as practical groups. In fact, one of his ways of determining if an individual had attained a given concept is whether or not one could show that the individual's manipulation of a given concept was isomorphic with a group representation of that same concept.

Most of Piaget's research concerns: (a) an account of the emergence (around the age of 7-8 years) of concrete operational thinking in the child, together with (b) an account of how such thinking is different from pre-operational thinking activity. Essentially, for Piaget, the attainment of the stage of concrete operational thinking is marked by a consistent (as opposed to sporadic) capacity to exhibit certain kinds of operational activities while physically and mentally manipulating various aspects of reality. Among these operations, Piaget gives special attention to the properties of identity, reversibility and compensation.

Identity refers to the way in which the quantitative character of some substance remains exactly the same despite superficial changes of appearance undergone by that substance as the result of some sort of manipulation. Thus, when a certain quantity of liquid is poured from a short, fat beaker to a tall, thin beaker, the quantities' identity remains the same despite the apparent differences in appearance of the two beakers.

Reversibility concerns instances in which a process can be reversed without changing the basic identity of that which is being subjected to the reversal process. For example, if one pours from beaker A into beaker B, and, then,, one pours from beaker B back into beaker A, this is an instance of reversibility since the basic quantitative character of the liquid has not changed.

Finally, compensation is an operation involving two or more actions which have the effect of canceling one another, or compensating for one another. If, for instance, one pours a liquid from a wide, but not very tall, beaker into a tall, but not very wide, beaker, the effect of the height of the second beaker compensates for, or cancels out the effect of, the width of the first beaker. If one is able to grasp the character of this relationship, then, according to Piaget, one has performed - either physically or mentally, the operation of compensation

Essentially, Piaget's concept of thinking consists of a set of transformations or operations. This set of operations is applied to a certain aspect of on-going experience in order to bring about a modification of some sort.

Piaget maintains one's knowledge of a given situation or aspect of on-going experience is a function of the kinds of transformations which one applies to that situation or aspect of experience. In other words, if one understands the structural character of the series of transformations responsible for shaping a given experiential state, then, one knows the nature of that state. Consequently, for Piaget, having an understanding of the transformational history of the genesis of a given structure is the key to acquiring knowledge of that structure.

When one speaks of the construction of reality, as Piaget frequently does, this does not necessarily mean one generates the character of reality or that one is transforming reality. There are two broad possibilities here.

In one case, the individual does, literally, construct or invent 'reality' since the structural character of his/her construction is a deviation from, or distortion of, the nature of reality. As a result, the individual has imposed something alien onto reality.

The other kind of construction process, however, does not involve inventing, in any distortive or deviant sense. On the other hand, this sort of construction process may involve the development of some form of analog stand-in for the original aspect of reality which is being represented by the construction.

In this latter sense of construction, the individual is working toward developing a set of congruence functions. Ideally, these congruence functions will generate structures of understanding capable of accurately reflecting the structural character with respect to some aspect of reality and to which identifying reference is being made through means of the construction. In this sense of construction, the individual is taking reality as the set of blueprint guidelines that is to become the basis for constructing his/her own analog model of those ontological blueprints.

Although both senses of construction seem to be implicit in Piaget, the distinction is not always clear cut. Often times, one gets the impression his use of the idea of 'constructing reality' is as if reality were being invented anew. As a result, one tends to lose sight of the way in which reality can be mirror imaged in the form of an analog or representational model through which the individual actually grasps, on some level of scale, the structural character of a certain aspect of reality.

Central to Piaget's notion of intellectual development is the individual's active engagement of, and operating on, different aspects of the 'world'. A second key factor in Piaget's conception of intellectual development revolves around the capacity to coordinate such activity into patterns or schemata or action structures.

However, Piaget does not account for the origins of this capacity to coordinate. Furthermore, Piaget fails to account for how the individual is able to progress from one kind of coordinating activity at a given stage of intellectual development, to another, qualitatively different kind of coordinating activity at some other stage of intellectual development.

Piaget does speak of a "tertium quid" process that is claimed to be an expression of: genesis without structure and structure without genesis. Unfortunately, this process remains something of a black box mechanism since its inner workings remain elusive throughout Piaget's writings.

From the perspective of the present article, a given stage of development consists in a preoccupation with, or dominance by, one or more attractor basins. Some of these attractor basis may be indigenous to biological givens. Other such attractor basins may be generated as a function of the way the individual engages, and is engaged by, a variety of cultural and social themes. In both cases, the attractor basins shape, color, orient, and help organize focal activity and its accompanying hermeneutical operator.

The transition to a new stage of development is characterized by the spontaneous or induced emergence of a new category of attractor basin(s) which begins to replace the sphere of influence of the previously established basin(s). However, one need not suppose this transition occurs because of any innate sequence of stages which unfold over time. Or, if there are such innate, sequential influences, they may not always play a dominant role, or they may be capable of being modulated by other non-sequence oriented systems.

From the very beginning there may be a spectrum of ratios of constraints and degrees of freedom for focal activity to select from, as well as by which to be influenced. However, from a point of view of information processing, theory building, issues of simplicity, perceived priority of needs, and so on, certain ratios may come to form the germ of attractor basins more readily than do other ratios of constraints and degrees of freedom during the early stages of development.

Thus, for example, one might expect that - on the basis of both priority of needs, as well as ease of access and manipulation - sensorimotor interests and inclinations might precede either concrete or formal operations, even though the capacity for, and inclinations toward, both of the latter sort of operations already are present in the infant. Using similar reasoning, one might suppose that an individual’s concrete interests and inclinations would tend to precede or marginalize the individual’s tendencies toward formal operations, until sufficient experiences of a formal kind had been acquired, processed, and used.

If so, then, stockpiling of experiences, processing time, and level of difficulty or ease of access with respect to various kinds of operational thinking may be the dominant themes in determining the sequence in which cognitive stages of thinking are encountered. Biological maturation also, of course, plays a role here, but not necessarily in the sense that the sequence of cognitive stages are inherently pre-established in the way that Piaget argues is the case.

In addition, once under the sphere of influence of a given biological and/or hermeneutical attractor basin, the individual gets use to seeing, understanding and being oriented to things in particular ways. Thus, there is a sort of inertial property associated with such attractor systems.

Over time, the individual builds up a backlog of experience with, and sophistication in developing and using, properties and features such as information processing, hermeneutical dialectics, conceptual models, and so on. As a result of building up a backlog of experience, the individual has an opportunity to explore some of the other ratios of constraints and degrees of freedom that are available to the individual. As these other ratios are explored, tried out, constructed, refined and so on, they form the germs of new attractor basins.

By and large, however, these later emerging, attractor basins often are over-shadowed by already existing attractor basins which have associated with them a hefty amount of inertia. Therefore, for a period of time, sensorimotor activity tends to dominate both concrete and formal operations - though there are traces of the latter two sort of operational activity which continue to emerge, just as, for a time, concrete operational activity tends to dominate formal operational activity, although, nonetheless, there are episodic instances of formal operational activity manifesting itself despite concrete operational domination.

On the other hand, the new attractor basins often have the advantage of improving the quality of the individual's dialectical interaction with the environment. This is accomplished through extending and deepening the individual's range of competent interaction with the environment, as well as by providing a series of strategies providing better, faster as well as more satisfying ways of approaching and resolving a whole host of issues and problems.

Consequently, the old and new attractors compete, in a sense, for the attention of focal activity. The gradual process of transition from one stage to another reflects this competition.

In addition, the process of transition reflects the changing character of the way focal activity orients itself toward, as well as permits itself to be influenced by, different attractor basins. This changing nature in the qualitative character of focal engagement activity may be as much a function of having the time to sift through incoming data and information, as well as the time to develop models and strategies for handling such data, as it reflects motivational, emotional, and intellectual inclinations which are inherent in the individual.

Ideally, the attractor basins which are most efficient, most heuristically valuable, and most far-reaching in their capacities to solve problems or deal with the world in an effective manner would come to dominance. However, the inertia of already existing attractor systems must be overcome in the process, and this does not always occur, for any number of reasons.

Thus, the developmental history of an individual will reflect the manner in which the dialectic involving biological givens, the hermeneutical operator, and cultural/social vectors is given expression. Some of the themes of such a dialectic will be shared universally by all people. Some of the themes of the aforementioned dialectic will be shared by the members of a given culture or community. On the other hand, some of the themes of the dialectic will be unique to a given individual.

In short, the point of view taken in this article argues that the hermeneutical operator is at the heart of many kinds of intellectual activity on many different levels of scale. Moreover, such an operator is present from the very beginning of life - although experience, language, education and various kinds of intellectual/emotional challenge are required to act as catalytic agents to permit the operator to generate structures of differential character, over time, through the operator's dialectic with various facets of ontology. Finally, the apparent stages of intellectual development may be as much a reflection of the problems surrounding the processing of information and the purely procedural or methodological need to grasp some steps before others, as it is a reflection of biologically indigenous features in the character of intellectual development.

According to Piaget, neither biological nor environmental factors, in and of themselves, can lead to the emergence of the formal stage of operations. What is required, in addition, is for thought to reflexively operate on itself. When this occurs, the individual sets in motion a process that works toward a final, stable equilibrium.

This sort of equilibrium is final for Piaget because he believes formal operations constitute the highest and most powerful kind of thinking which is available to the individual. Moreover, this stage, once it is acquired, is fully in equilibrium since, according to Piaget, whenever any event serves to disturb such a system, then, spontaneous, compensating, operational activity is set in motion in order to resolve the problems generated by the disturbance.

One of the problems with Piaget's conception of the formal stage of operational thinking is his assumption that it constitutes the final and highest form of equilibrium which is possible for human beings. Carl Jung, to name but one individual, was of the opinion that during the second half of life there was a crisis faced by the individual in which there was a major need to integrate the shadow aspect into one's personality.

This crisis manifests itself as a fundamental disturbance of equilibrium. Moreover, the crisis required the individual to seek solutions through the process of individuation. This does not easily fit in, if it does at all, with Piaget's belief that the logico-mathematical operational mode of thinking constitutes the final word in the equilibration process.

Furthermore, virtually every mystical tradition points in the direction of an essential dis-equilibrium which distorts all understanding and thinking. Such a state of imbalance will persist until it is resolved through the development of supra-rational capabilities involving insight, intuition, patience, compassion, forbearance, trust, sincerity, gratitude and, most importantly, love.

According to the mystics, true equilibrium is only achieved when these other modes of operational activity are fully developed. Although discursive thinking of a logical sort does have a role to play in all of this, it is hardly the dominant, or the central, consideration.

Finally, one needs to raise, once again, the fact there are purely rational modes of operational activity that are every bit as important as are formal logical/mathematical modes of operational thinking but which cannot be reduced to these latter forms of thinking. Hermeneutical thinking, for instance, neither needs to conform to, nor does it need to reflect, systems of formal logic or mathematics.

It can have a structural character which is quite different from these latter systems of thinking, yet, such non-formal thinking cannot be said to be, in any way, inferior to formal mathematical-logical thinking. In fact, non-formal modes of thinking are capable of engaging a whole variety of moral, religious, political, artistic, historical, legal, philosophical, literary, and interpersonal issues, while still producing heuristically valuable results. However, formal logic and mathematics haven't been able to make the slightest, plausible dent in such issues.

Piaget does emphasize that all levels of operational thinking exhibit the property of being able to manipulate mental structures in a purely mental manner, without any sort of physical activity serving as intermediary. Moreover, part of such mental manipulation involves the capacity to think in terms of the possibility and potential inherent in some given structure, rather than being restricted only to what has been observed.

Nonetheless, Piaget maintains that the primary means of exploring and exploiting such possibility and potential is through the hypothetical-deductive method as expressed in terms of systems of formal logic and mathematics. Very little, if any, credence is given to the possibility there might be equally viable, if not more productive, alternative means of exploring and exploiting the possibilities encompassed by various ontological and experiential structures.

Piaget draws a distinction between wisdom and knowledge. According to Piaget, wisdom refers to that which results when there is a dialectic between personal values and objective knowledge. Such results are thought of by him as largely philosophical in nature. Knowledge, on the other hand, presupposes determinate criteria of truth and rigorous standards of methodology. The end result of the combined effect of these criteria of truth and standards of methodology is science.

Piaget's characterization of wisdom is rather arbitrary, if not biased. Traditionally, wisdom has meant having a certain orientation to the truth - namely, one which permitted the individual to be able to successfully apply the truth to the problems of everyday life.