Jean Piaget (1955)

The Construction of Reality in the

Child
The Elaboration of the Universe (Last Chapter).
— Conclusion —

Source: The Construction of Reality in the Child, translated by Margaret Cook, 1955, Routledge
and Kegan Paul. Only the last chapter reproduced here.

In our first study of the beginnings of mental life we analysed the origins of intelligence in
children and tried to show how the forms of intellectual activity are constructed on the sensori
motor level. In the current work we have tried, on the other hand, to understand how the real
categories of sensorimotor intelligence are organised, that is, how the world is constructed by
means of this instrument. In conclusion, the time has come to show the unity of these various
processes and their relations with those of the child’s thought, envisaged in their most general
aspect.

§ I. Assimilation and Accommodation

The successive study of concepts of object, space, causality, and time has led us to the same
conclusions: the elaboration of the universe by sensorimotor intelligence constitutes the
transition from a state in which objects are centred about a self which believes it directs them,
although completely unaware of itself as subject, to a state in which the self is placed, at least
practically, in a stable world conceived as independent of personal activity. How is this
evolution possible?

It can be explained only by the development of intelligence. Intelligence progresses from a

state in which accommodation to the environment is undifferentiated from the assimilation of
things to the subject’s schemata to a state in which the accommodation of multiple schemata is
distinguished from their respective and reciprocal assimilation. To understand this process,
which sums up the whole evolution of sensorimotor intelligence, let us recall its steps, starting
with the development of assimilation itself.

In its beginnings, assimilation is essentially the utilisation of the external environment by the
subject to nourish his hereditary or acquired schemata. It goes without saying that schemata
such as those of sucking, sight, prehension, etc., constantly need to be accommodated to
things, and that the necessities of this accommodation often thwart the assimilatory effort. But
this accommodation remains so undifferentiated from the assimilatory processes that it does
not give rise to any special active behaviour pattern but merely consists in an adjustment of the
pattern to the details of the things assimilated. Hence it is natural that at this developmental
level the external world does nor seem formed by permanent objects, that neither space nor
time is yet organised in groups and objective series, and that causality is not spatialised or
located in things. In other words, at first the universe consists in mobile and plastic perceptual
images centred about personal activity. But it is self-evident that to the extent that this activity is
undifferentiated from the things it constantly assimilates to itself it remains unaware of its own
subjectivity; the external world therefore begins by being confused with the sensations of a self
unaware of itself, before the two factors become detached from one another and are organised
correlatively.
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On the other hand, in proportion as the schemata are multiplied and differentiated by their
reciprocal assimilations as well as their progressive accommodation to the diversities of reality,
the accommodation is dissociated from assimilation little by little and at the same time ensures
a gradual delimitation of the external environment and of the subject. Hence assimilation
ceases merely to incorporate things in personal activity and establishes, through the progress
of that activity, an increasingly tight web of coordinations among the schemata which define it
and consequently among the objects to which these schemata are applied. In terms of
reflective intelligence this would mean that deduction is organised and applied to an experience
conceived as external. From this time on, the universe is built up into an aggregate of
permanent objects connected by causal relations that are independent of the subject and are
placed in objective space and time. Such a universe, instead of depending on personal activity,
is on the contrary imposed upon the self to the extent that it comprises the organism as a part
in a whole. The self thus becomes aware of itself, at least in its practical action, and discovers
itself as a cause among other causes and as an object subject to the same laws as other
objects.

In exact proportion to the progress of intelligence in the direction of differentiation of schemata

and their reciprocal assimilation, the universe proceeds from the integral and unconscious
egocentrism of the beginnings to an increasing solidification and objectification. During the
earliest stages the child perceives things like a solipsist who is unaware of himself as subject
and is familiar only with his own actions. But step by step with the coordination of his
intellectual instruments he discovers himself in placing himself as an active object among the
other active objects in a universe external to himself.

These global transformations of the objects of perception, and of the very intelligence which
makes them, gradually denote the existence of a sort of law of evolution which can be phrased
as follows: assimilation and accommodation proceed from a state of chaotic undifferentiation to
a state of differentiation with correlative coordination.

In their initial directions, assimilation and accommodation are obviously opposed to one
another, since assimilation is conservative and tends to subordinate the environment to the
organism as it is, whereas accommodation is the source of changes and bends the organism to
the successive constraints of the environment. But if in their rudiment these two functions are
antagonistic, it is precisely the role of mental life in general and of intelligence in particular to
intercoordinate them.

First let us remember that this coordination presupposes no special force of organisation, since
from the beginning assimilation and accommodation are indissociable from each other.
Accommodation of mental structures to reality implies the existence of assimilatory schemata
apart from which any structure would be impossible. Inversely, the formation of schemata
through assimilation entails the utilisation of external realities to which the former must
accommodate, however crudely. Assimilation and accommodation are therefore the two poles
of an interaction between the organism and the environment, which is the condition for all
biological and intellectual operation, and such an interaction presupposes from the point of
departure an equilibrium between the two tendencies of opposite poles. The question is to
ascertain what forms are successively taken by this equilibrium which is being constituted.

If the assimilation of reality to the subject’s schemata involves their continuous accommodation,
assimilation is no less opposed to any new accommodation, that is, to any differentiation of
schemata by environmental conditions not encountered up to then. On the other hand, if
accommodation prevails, that is, if the schema is differentiated, it marks the start of new
assimilations. Every acquisition of accommodation becomes material for assimilation, but
assimilation always resists new accommodations. It is this situation which explains the diversity

2
of form of equilibrium between the two processes, according to whether one envisages the
point of departure or the destiny of their development.

At their point of departure they are relatively undifferentiated in relation to each other, since
they are both included in the interaction which unites the organism to the environment and
which, in its initial form, is so close and direct that it does not comprise any specialised
operation of accommodation, such as the tertiary circular reactions, behaviour patterns of
active experimentation, etc., will subsequently be. But they are none the less antagonistic,
since, though each assimilatory schema is accommodated to the usual circumstances, it resists
every new accommodation, precisely through lack of specialised accommodative technique. It
is therefore possible to speak of chaotic undifferentiation. It is at this level that the external
world and the self remain undissociated to such a point that neither objects nor spatial,
temporal, or causal objectifications are possible.

To the extent that new accommodations multiply because of the demands of the environment
on the one hand and of the coordinations between schemata on the other, accommodation is
differentiated from assimilation and by virtue of that very fact becomes complementary to it. It is
differentiated, because, in addition to the accommodation necessary for the usual
circumstances, the subject becomes interested in novelty and pursues it for its own sake. The
more the schemata are differentiated, the smaller the gap between the new and the familiar
becomes, so that novelty, instead of constituting an annoyance avoided by the subject,
becomes a problem and invites searching. Thereafter and to the same extent, assimilation and
accommodation enter into relations of mutual dependence. On the one hand, the reciprocal
assimilation of the schemata and the multiple accommodations which stem from them favour
their differentiation and consequently their accommodation; on the other hand, the
accommodation to novelties is extended sooner or later into assimilation, because, interest in
the new being simultaneously the function of resemblances and of differences in relation to the
familiar, it is a matter of conserving new acquisitions and of reconciling their. with the old ones.
An increasingly close interconnection thus tends to be established between the two functions
which are constantly being better differentiated, and by extending the lines this interaction
ends, as we have seen, on the plane of reflective thought, in the mutual dependency of
assimilatory deduction and experimental techniques.

Thus it may be seen that intellectual activity begins with confusion of experience and of
awareness of the self, by virtue of the chaotic undifferentiation of accommodation and
assimilation. In other words, knowledge of the external world begins with an immediate
utilisation of things, whereas knowledge of self is stopped by this purely practical and utilitarian
contact. Hence there is simply interaction between the most superficial zone of external reality
and the wholly corporal periphery of the self. On the contrary, gradually as the differentiation
and coordination of assimilation and accommodation occur, experimental and accommodative
activity penetrates to the interior of things, while assimilatory activity becomes enriched and
organised. Hence there is a progressive formation of relationships between zones that are
increasingly deep and removed from really and the increasingly intimate operations of personal
activity. intelligence thus begins neither with knowledge of the self nor of things as such but
with knowledge of their interaction, and it Is by orienting itself simultaneously toward the two
poles of that interaction that intelligence organises the world by organising itself.

A diagram will make the thing comprehensible. Let the organism be represented by a small
circle inscribed in a large circle which corresponds to the surrounding universe. The meeting
between the organism and the environment takes place at point A and at all analogous points,
which are simultaneously the most external to the organism and to the environment itself. In
other words, the first knowledge of the universe or of himself that the subject can acquire is
knowledge relating to the most immediate appearance of things or to the most external and
material aspect of his being. From the point of view of consciousness, this primitive relation
3
between subject and object is a relation of undifferentiation, corresponding to the protoplasmic
consciousness of the first weeks of life when no distinction is made between the self and the
non-self. From the point of view of behaviour this relation constitutes the morphologic-reflex
organisation, in so far as it is a necessary condition of primitive consciousness. But from this
point of junction and undifferentiation A, knowledge proceeds along two complementary roads.
By virtue of the very fact that all knowledge is simultaneously accommodation to the object and
assimilation to the subject, the progress of intelligence works in the dual direction of
externalisation and internalisation, and its two poles will be the acquisition of physical
experience ( ->Y) and the acquisition of consciousness of the intellectual operation itself ( -> X).
That is why every great experimental discovery in the realm of exact sciences is accompanied
by a reflexive progress of reason on itself (of logico-mathematical deduction), that is, by
progress in the formation of reason in so far as it is internal activity, and it is impossible to
decide once for all whether the progress of the experiment is due to that of reason or the
inverse. From this point of view the morphologic-reflex organisation, that is, the physiological
and anatomic aspect of the organism, gradually appears to the mind as external to it, and the
intellectual activity which extends it by internalising it presents itself as the essential of our
existence as living beings.

In the last analysis, it is this process of forming relationships between a universe constantly
becoming more external to the self and an intellectual activity progressing internally which
explains the evolution of the real categories, that is, of the concepts of object, space, causality,
and time. So long as the interaction between subject and object is revealed in the form of
exchanges of slight amplitude in a zone of undifferentiation, the universe has the appearance of
depending on the subject’s personal activity, although the latter is not known in its subjective
aspect. To the extent, on the contrary, that the interaction increases, the progress of knowledge
in the two complementary directions of object and subject enables the subject to place himself
among objects as a part in a coherent and permanent whole. Consequently, to the extent that
assimilation and accommodation transcend the initial state of "false equilibrium" between the
subject’s needs and the resistance of things to attain a true equilibrium, that is, a harmony
between internal organisation and external experience, the subject’s perspective of the
universe is radically transformed; from integral egocentrism to objectivity is the law of that
evolution. The relations of assimilation and accommodation thus constitute, from the time of the
sensorimotor !level, a formative process analogous to that which, on the plane of verbal and
reflective intelligence, is represented by the relations of individual thought and socialisation.
Just as accommodation to the point of view of others enables individual thought to be located in
a totality of perspectives that insures its objectivity and reduces its egocentrism, so also the
coordination of sensorimotor assimilation and accommodation leads the subject to go outside
himself to solidify and objectify his universe to the point where he is able to include himself in it
while continuing to assimilate it to himself.

§ 2. The Transition from Sensorimotor Intelligence to Conceptual Thought

This last remark leads us to examine briefly, in conclusion, the relations between the practical
universe elaborated by the sensorimotor intelligence and the representation of the world
brought about by later reflective thought.

In the course of the first two years of childhood the evolution of sensorimotor intelligence, and
also the correlative elaboration of the universe, seem, as we have tried to analyse them, to lead
to a state of equilibrium bordering on rational thought. Thus, starting with the use of reflexes
and the first acquired association, the child succeeds within a few months in constructing a
system of schemata capable of unlimited combinations which presages that of logical concepts
and relations. During the last stage of their development these schemata even become capable
of certain spontaneous and internal regroupings which are equivalent to mental deduction and
construction. Moreover, gradually as objects, causality, space, and time are elaborated, a
4
coherent universe follows the chaos of the initial egocentric perceptions. When in the second
year of life representation completes action by means of the progressive internalisation of
behaviour patterns, one might therefore expect that the totality of sensorimotor operations
would merely pass from the plane of action to that of language and thought and that the
organisation of schemata would thus be directly extended in a system of rational concepts.

In reality, things are far from being so simple. In the first place, on the plane of practical
intelligence alone, the excellent studies of Andre Reyl show that not all the problems are solved
by the child by the end of his second year. As soon as the data of problems become
complicated and the subjects are obliged to attain their ends by means of complex contacts or
displacements, in the solution of these new problems through a sort of temporal displacement
in extension we rediscover all the obstacles analysed in this volume apropos of the elementary
stages of the first two years of life. Furthermore, and this is valuable to the theory of temporal
displacements, these obstacles reappear in the same order despite the gap which separates
the ages of birth to 2 years, studied here, from the ages of three to eight years studied by
Andre Rey. Thus in Rey’s experiments the child begins by revealing a sort of "dynamic
realism," "in the course of which the movement (pulling, pushing, etc.) would possess a quality
independent of any adaptation to the particular data of the environment." Then he goes through
a phase of "optical realism" analogous to that which we observe among chimpanzees, in which
he substitutes for the physical relations of bodies the visual relations corresponding to the
apparent data of perception. How is it possible not to compare these two preliminary steps to
those which characterise the beginnings of sensorimotor intelligence and of the practical
universe resulting from them? Dynamic realism is the residue of the assimilation of things to
actions that accounts for practical groups and series, for the magico-phenomenalistic causality
and the object-less universe peculiar to our elementary stages. Before being able to structure a
complex situation, the child from three to four years of age, like the baby a few months old who
is confronted by a situation that is simpler but from his point of view obscure, is limited to
assimilating it to the act which should be performed. Because of a residual belief in the power
of his personal activity, he still confers upon his gestures a sort of absolute value, which is
tantamount to forgetting momentarily that things are permanent substances grouped spatially,
seriated temporally, and sustaining among themselves objective causal relations. With regard
to optical realism it seems clear that it constitutes a residue of behaviour patterns which are
intermediate between the primitive egocentric stages and the stages of objectification,
behaviour patterns characterised by subjective groups and series or by transitional behaviour
relating to the beginnings of the object and of spatialized causality. Optical realism, too,
consists in considering things as being what they appear to be in immediate perception and not
what they will become once they have been inserted in a system of rational relations
transcending the visual field. Thus the child imagines that a stick can draw an object because it
is beside it or touches it, as though optical contact were equivalent to a causal link. It is
precisely this confusion of immediate visual perceptions with physical realities that
characterises the subjective groups or series, for example, when the baby does not know how
to turn over a nursing bottle because he cannot conceive of the object’s reverse side, or when
he imagines himself able to rediscover objects where he saw them the first time, regardless of
their actual trajectory.

Hence, between the sensorimotor intelligence which precedes the advent of speech and the
later practical intelligence which subsists under verbal and conceptual realities, there is not only
a linear continuity but also there are temporal displacements in extension, so that in the
presence of every truly new problem the same primitive processes of adaptation reappear,
although diminishing in importance with age.

But above all, even if these obstacles encountered in action by the two- to seven-year-old child
are destined to be overcome finally, through the instruments prepared by the sensorimotor
intelligence during the first two years of life, the transition from the merely practical plane to that
5
of speech and conceptual and socialised thought brings with it, by nature, obstacles that
singularly complicate the progress of intelligence.

At the outset, two innovations place conceptual thought in opposition to sensorimotor

intelligence and explain the difficulty of transition from one of these two forms of intellectual
activity to the other. In the first place, sensorimotor intelligence seeks only practical adaptation,
that is, it aims only at success or utilisation, whereas conceptual thought leads to knowledge as
such and therefore yields to norms of truth. Even when the child explores a new object or
studies the displacements he provokes [by a sort of "experiment in order to see," there is
always in these kinds of sensorimotor assimilations, however precise the accommodation they
evidence, the concept of a practical result to be obtained. By virtue of the very fact that the child
cannot translate his observations into a system of verbal judgments and reflexive concepts but
can simply register them by means of sensorimotor schemata, that is, by outlining possible
actions, there can be no question of attributing to him the capacity of arriving at pure proofs or
judgments properly so called, but it must be said that these judgments, if they were expressed
in words, would be equivalent to something like, "one can do this with this object," "one could
achieve this result," etc. In the behaviour patterns oriented by an actual goal, such as the
discovery of new means through active experimentation or the invention of new means through
mental combinations, the sole problem is to reach the desired goal, hence the only values
involved are success or failure, and to the child it is not a matter of seeking a truth for itself or
reflecting upon the relations which made it possible to obtain the desired result. It is therefore
no exaggeration to say that sensorimotor intelligence is limited to desiring success or practical
adaptation, whereas the function of verbal or conceptual thought is to know and state truths.

There is a second difference between these two types of activity: sensorimotor intelligence is
an adaptation of the individual to things or to the body of another person but without
socialisation of the intellect as such; whereas conceptual thought is collective thought obeying
common laws. Even when the baby imitates an intelligent act performed by someone else or
understands, from a smile or an expression of displeasure, the intentions of another person, we
still may not call this an exchange of thoughts leading to modification of those intentions. On
the contrary, after speech has been acquired the socialisation of thought is revealed by the
elaboration of concepts, of relations, and by the formation of rules, that is, there is a structural
evolution. It is precisely to the extent that verbal-conceptual thought is transformed by its
collective nature that it becomes capable of proof and search for truth, in contradistinction to
the practical character of the acts of sensorimotor intelligence and their search for success or
satisfaction. It is by cooperation with another person that the mind arrives at verifying
judgments, verification implying a presentation or an exchange and having in itself no meaning
as regards individual activity. Whether conceptual thought is rational because it is social or vice
versa, the interdependence of the search for truth and of socialisation seems to us undeniable.

The adaptation of intelligence to these new realities, when speech and conceptual thought are
superimposed on the sensorimotor plane, entails the reappearance of all the obstacles already
overcome in the realm of action. That is why, despite the level reached by the intelligence in the
fifth and sixth stages of its sensorimotor development, it does not appear to be rational at the
outset, when it begins to be organised on the verbal-conceptual plane. On the contrary, it
manifests a series of temporal displacements in comprehension and no longer only in
extension, since in view of corresponding operations the child of a given age is less advanced
on the verbal-conceptual plane than on the plane of action. In simpler terms, the child does not
at first succeed in reflecting in words and concepts the procedures that he already knows how
to carry out in acts, and if he cannot reflect them it is because, in order to adapt himself to the
collective and conceptual plane on which his thought will henceforth move, he is obliged to
repeat the work of coordination between assimilation and accommodation already
accomplished in his sensorimotor adaptation anterior to the physical and practical universe.

6
It is easy to prove: (1) that the assimilation and accommodation of the individual from the time
of the beginnings of speech present a balance less well developed in relation to the social
group than in the realm of sensorimotor intelligence; and ( 2 ) that to make possible the
adaptation of the mind to the group these functions must proceed again over the same steps,
and in the same order, as during the first months of life. From the social point of view,
accommodation is nothing other than imitation and the totality of the operations enabling the
individual to subordinate himself to the precepts and the demands of the group. With regard to
assimilation it consists as before in incorporating reality into the activity and perspectives of the
self. Just as on the plane of adaptation to the sensorimotor universe the subject, while
submitting to the constraints of the environment from the very beginning, starts by considering
things as dependent on his actions and succeeds only little by little in placing himself as an
element in a totality which is coherent and independent of himself, so also on the social plane
the child, while at first obeying someone else’s suggestions, for a long time remains enclosed in
his personal point of view before placing it among other points of view. The self and the group
therefore begin by remaining undissociated in a mixture of egocentrism and submission to
environmental constraints, and subsequently are differentiated and give rise to a cooperation
between personalities which have become autonomous. In other words, at the time when
assimilation and accommodation are already dissociated on the plane of sensorimotor
adaptation, they are not yet dissociated on the social plane, and thus they reproduce there an
evolution analogous to that which has already occurred on the former plane.

From this arises a series of consequences very important in the structure of the child’s thought
at its beginnings. Just as sensorimotor intelligence starts as the assimilation of objects to the
schemata of personal activity with necessary accommodation but of inverse tendency to the
preceding accommodation, and subsequently arrives at a precise adaptation to reality through
the coordination of assimilation with accommodation, so also thought, at its advent, begins by
being the assimilation of reality to the self with accommodation to the thought of others but
without synthesis of these two tendencies, and only later acquires the rational unity which
reconciles personal perspective with reciprocity.

In the first place, just as practical intelligence seeks success before truth, egocentric thought, to
the extent that it is assimilation to the self, leads to satisfaction and not to objectivity. The
extreme form of this assimilation to personal desires and interests is symbolic or imaginative
play in which reality is transformed by the needs of the self to the point where the meanings of
thought may remain strictly individual and incommunicable. But between this ultimate region of
egocentric thought (a region in which the symbolic imagination makes it possible to increase
tenfold the possibilities of satisfaction offered to the action and consequently to reinforce the
tendencies of assimilation to personal activity previously manifested by sensorimotor
intelligence) and thought adapted to another person is found an important zone of thought
which, while presenting no quality of play, presents analogous characteristics of anomia and
egocentrism. To account for this it is enough to demonstrate the difficulty experienced by little
children from two to six years of age in participating in a conversation or a discussion, in
narrating or explaining, in short, in emerging from personal thought to adapt themselves to the
thought of others. In all the social behaviour patterns of thought it is easy to see how much
more easily the child is led to satisfy his desires and to judge from his own personal point of
view than to enter into that of others to arrive at an objective view. But in contrast to this
powerful assimilation of reality to the self we witness during the earliest stages of individual
thought the child’s astonishing docility with respect to the suggestions and statements of
another person; the little child constantly repeats what he hears, imitates the attitudes he
observes, and thus yields as readily to training by the group as he resists rational intercourse.
In short, assimilation to the self and accommodation to others begins with a compromise
without profound synthesis, and at first the subject wavers between these two tendencies
without being able to control or organise them.

7
In the second place, there arises a series of intellectual structures peculiar to these beginnings
of infantile thought and which reproduce through temporal displacement the initial sensorimotor
structures. Thus the first concepts the child uses are not at the outset logical classes capable of
operations of addition, multiplication, subtraction, etc., which characterise the logic of classes in
its normal functioning, ,but rather kinds of preconcepts proceeding by syncretic assimilations.
So also the child who succeeds in handling relationships on the sensorimotor plane begins on
the verbal and reflexive plane by substituting for relationships absolute qualities for lack of
ability to coordinate the different perspectives and to emerge from the personal point of view to
which he assimilates everything. Thereafter the primitive infantile reasoning seems to return to
the sensorimotor coordinations of the fifth and sixth stages: not yet familiar with classes or
relations properly so called, it consists in simple fusions, in transductions proceeding by
syncretic assimilations. It is only in the course of a laborious development which transforms
ego-centric assimilation into true deduction, and accommodation into a real adjustment to
experience and to perspectives surpassing the personal point of view, that the child’s reasoning
becomes rational and thus extends, on the plane of thought, the acquisitions of sensorimotor
intelligence.

Thus we see the extent to which the developmental pattern of assimilation and of
accommodation characterising sensorimotor intelligence constitutes a general phenomenon
capable of being reproduced on this new plane of conceptual thought before accommodation
actually extends assimilation.

§ Conclusion

The formation of the universe, which seemed accomplished with that of sensorimotor
intelligence, is continued throughout the development of thought, which is natural, but is
continued while seeming at first to repeat itself, before truly progressing to encompass the data
of action in a representative system of the totality. This is the information we have just gained
from a comparison of our present observations with the results of examining the
representations of the child of three to twelve years of age.

To understand the scope of such a fact we must amplify what we said in §1 of these
conclusions about the relations between intellectual assimilation and accommodation, by
applying these reflections to the processes of thought itself.

We have tried to show how, on the sensorimotor plane, assimilation and accommodation, at
first undifferentiated but pulling behaviour in opposite directions, gradually became
differentiated and complementary. From what we have seen with regard to space, object,
causality, and time it is clear that on the plane of representative thought, which is at the same
time that of social relationships or coordination among individual minds, new assimilations and
accommodations become necessary and these in turn begin with a phase of chaotic
undifferentiation and later proceed to a complementary differentiation and harmonisation.

During the earliest stages of thought, accommodation remains on the surface of physical as
well as social experience. Of course, on the plane of action the child is no longer entirely
dominated by the appearance of things, because through sensorimotor intelligence he has
managed to construct a coherent practical universe by combining accommodation to objects
with assimilation of objects to intercoordinated structures. But when it is a question of
transcending action to form an impersonal representation of reality, that is, a communicable
image destined to attain truth rather than mere utility, accommodation to things finds itself at
grips with new difficulties. It is no longer a matter only of acting but of describing, not only of
foreseeing but of explaining, and even if the sensorimotor schemata are already adapted to
their own function, which is to insure the equilibrium between individual activity and the
perceived environment, thought is obliged to construct a new representation of things to satisfy
8
the common consciousness and the demands of a conception of totality. In this sense the first
contact of thought, properly so called, with the material universe constitutes what may be called
"immediate experience" in contradistinction to experimentation which is scientific or corrected
by the assimilation of things to reason.

Immediate experience, that is, the accommodation of thought to the surface of things, is simply
empirical experience which considers, as objective datum, reality as it appears to direct
perception. In the numerous cases in which reality coincides with appearance this superficial
contact with the object suffices to lead to truth. But the further one departs from the field of
immediate action to construct an adequate representation of reality, the more necessary it is, to
understand the phenomena, to include them in a network of relations becoming increasingly
remote from appearance and to insert appearance in a new reality elaborated by reason. In
other words, it becomes more and more necessary to correct appearance and this requires the
formation of relationships among, or the reciprocal assimilation of, various points of view. In the
example we cited in §3 of the groups of displacements relating to mountains, it is obvious that a
whole structuring of experience, that is, a rational assimilation and coordination of many
possible points of view, is indispensable to make the child understand that, despite
appearance, mountains do not displace themselves when one moves in relation to them and
that the various perspectives on them do not exclude the permanence of their form. The same
applies to attributing stationary banks to a river or a lake when the boat advances and, in a
general way, to organising distant space no longer depending on direct action. Concerning
objects let us consider the difference between immediate experience relating to the stars, that
is, simple accommodation of perception to their apparent size and movements, from the real
experience which the mind acquires when it combines that accommodation with an assimilation
of the same data to the activity of reason. From the first of these points of view, the stars are
little balls or spots located at the same height as clouds; their movements depend on our own
walking and their permanence is impossible to determine (even with respect to the sun, there
are children who believe in its identity with the moon when they do not, on the contrary, affirm
the existence of several suns and moons). From the second point of view, on the contrary, real
dimensions and distances no longer have any relation to appearance, the actual trajectories
correspond with the apparent movements only through relationships of increasing complexity,
and the identity of celestial bodies becomes the function of this system of totality. What is true
on a large scale of the stars is always true, on every scale, of objects on which direct action
does not bear. With regard to causality, the first example seen, like that of the floating of boats
so suggestive to the child, gives rise to the same considerations. By following the course of
immediate experience the child begins by believing that small boats float because they are
light; but when he sees a tiny piece of lead or a little pebble gliding along at the bottom of the
water, he adds that these bodies are doubtless too light and small to be held back by the water;
moreover big boats float because they are heavy and can thus carry themselves. In short, if
one remains on the surface of things, explanation is possible only at the price of continuous
contradictions, because, if it is to embrace the sinuosity of reality, thought must constantly add
apparent connections to one another instead of coordinating them in a coherent system of
totality. On the contrary, the contact of the mind with real experience leads to a simple
explanation, but on condition of completing this elementary accommodation of thought to the
immediate data of perception by a correlative assimilation of these data to a system of
relationships (between weight and volume, etc.) which reason succeeds in elaborating only by
replacing the appearance of things with a real construction. Let us also be satisfied, in the
realm of time and duration, with a single example, that of the dissociation of the concept of
speed into relations between the concepts of time and the space traversed. From the point of
view of immediate experience, the child succeeds very soon in estimating speeds of which he
has direct awareness, the spaces traversed in an identical time or the "before" and "after" in
arrival at a goal in cases of trajectories of the same length. But there is a considerable gap
between this and a dissociation of the notion of speed to extract a measurement of time, for this

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would involve replacing the direct intuitions peculiar to the elementary accommodation of
thought to things by a system of relations involving a constructive assimilation.

In short, thought in all realms starts from a surface contact with the external realities, that is, a
simple accommodation to immediate experience. Why then, does this accommodation remain,
in the true sense of the word, superficial, and why does it not at once lead to correcting the
sensory impression by rational truth? Because, and this is what we are leading up to, primitive
accommodation of thought, as previously that of sensorimotor intelligence, is undifferentiated
from a distorting assimilation of reality to the self and is at the same time oriented in the
opposite direction.

During this phase of superficial accommodation to physical and social experience, we observe
a continuous assimilation of the universe not only to the impersonal structure of the mind -
which is not completed except on the sensorimotor plane - but also and primarily to the
personal point of view, to individual experience, and even to the desires and affectivity of the
subject. Considered in its social aspect, this distorting assimilation consists, as we have seen
(§2), in a sort of egocentrism of thought so that thought, still unsubmissive to the norms of
intellectual reciprocity and logic, seeks satisfaction rather than truth and transforms reality into
a function of personal affectivity. From the point of view of the adaptation of thought to the
physical universe this assimilation leads to a series of consequences of interest to us here. In
the domain of space, for example, it is evident that, if the child remains dominated by the
immediate experience of the mountain which is displaced and by the other superficial
accommodations we have discussed, it is because these remain undifferentiated from a
continual assimilation of reality to the personal point of view; thus the child believes that his
own displacements govern those of the mountains, the sky, etc. The same IS true of objects.
To the extent the child has difficulty, for example, in constituting the identity of the moon and
the stars in general because he does not transcend the immediate experience of their apparent
movements, it is because he still believes he is followed by them and thus assimilates the
image of their displacements to his own point of view, exactly like the baby whose universe is ill
objectified because it is too closely centred on his own activity. With regard to causality, if the
child has difficulty in integrating his explanations into a coherent system of relations, this is
again because accommodation to the qualitative diversity of reality remains undifferentiated
from an assimilation of phenomena to personal activity. Why, for instance, are boats conceived
as heavy or light in themselves, without consideration of the relation of weight and volume, if
not because weight is evaluated as the function of the subject’s muscular experience instead of
being transformed into an objective relationship? So also, the primacy of internal duration over
external time attests to the existence of a distorting assimilation which necessarily
accompanies primitive accommodation of the mind to the surface of events.

The superficial accommodation of the beginnings of thought and the distorting assimilation of
reality to the self are therefore at first undifferentiated and they operate in opposite directions.
They are undifferentiated because the immediate experience which characterises the former
always, in the last analysis, consists in considering the personal point of view as the expression
of the absolute and thus in subjecting the appearance of things to an egocentric assimilation,
just as this assimilation is necessarily on a par with a direct perception that excludes the
construction of a rational system of relations. But at the beginning, however undifferentiated
may be these accommodative operations and those in which assimilation may be discerned,
they work in opposite directions. Precisely because immediate experience is accompanied by
an assimilation of perceptions to the schemata of personal activity or modelled after it,
accommodation to the inner workings of things is constantly impeded by it. Inversely,
assimilation of things to the self is constantly held in check by the resistances necessitating this
accommodation, since there is involved at least the appearance of reality, which is not
unlimitedly pliant to the subject’s will. So also, on the social plane, the constraint imposed by
the opinion of others thwarts egocentrism and vice versa, although the two attitudes of imitation
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of others and assimilation to the self are constantly coexistent and reveal the same difficulties
of adaptation to reciprocity and true cooperation.

On the contrary, gradually, as the child’s thought evolves, assimilation and accommodation are
differentiated and become increasingly complementary. In the realm of representation of the
world this means, on the one hand, that accommodation, instead of remaining on the surface of
experience, penetrates it more and more deeply, that is, under the chaos of appearances it
seeks regularities and becomes capable of real experimentations to establish them. On the
other hand, assimilation, instead of reducing phenomena to the concepts inspired by personal
activity, incorporates them in the system of relationships rising from the more profound activity
of intelligence itself. True experience and deductive construction thus become simultaneously
separate and correlative, whereas in the social realm the increasingly close adjustment of
personal thought to that of others and the reciprocal formation of relationships of perspectives
insures the possibility of a cooperation that constitutes precisely the environment that is
favourable to this elaboration of reason.

Thus it may be seen that thought in its various aspects reproduces on its own plane the
processes of evolution we have observed in the case of sensorimotor intelligence and the
structure of the initial practical universe. The development of reason, outlined on the
sensorimotor level, follows the same laws, once social life and reflective thought have been
formed. Confronted by the obstacles which the advent of those new realities raises, at the
beginning of this second period of intellectual evolution assimilation and accommodation again
find themselves in a situation through which they had already passed on the lower plane. But in
proceeding from the purely individual state characteristic of sensorimotor intelligence to the
cooperation which defines the plane on which thought will move henceforth, the child, after
having overcome his egocentrism and the other obstacles which impede this cooperation,
receives from it the instruments necessary to extend the rational construction prepared during
the first two years of life and to expand it into a system of logical relationships and adequate
representations.

Further Reading:
Genetic Epistemology | Biography | Marxist Psychology | Vygotsky Archive

Lektorsky | Stages in Mental Development of Children (Elkonin) The Child and his Behavior
(Luria)
Origins of Thought in the Child | Psychological Development of the Child, (Wallon)
Psychology Reference | Piaget on Vygotsky

Philosophy Archive @ marxists.org

http://marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/piaget2.htm

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