Disambiguation:
Age of Reason (disambiguation)
Age of Reason (disambiguation):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Reason_%28disambiguation%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17th-century_philosophy
Jean Piaget
photocredit: unive.it
"The stage of formal operations is quite different from concrete operations. While both are logical and systematic thought functions, people in the formal operations stage can apply these processes to more abstract problems and hypotheses.
This is Piaget’s last stage of cognitive development, after this he proposed “no further structural imrpovements in the quality of reasoning” (Wadsworth, 1989. pg.115).
Unfortunately, it is believed that not all s arrive at formal operations although most have reached their full potential by about 14 - 15 years of age.
There are several structures that are developed in this stage, hypothetico-deductive reasoning, scientific-inductive reasoning and reflective abstraction. Piaget (1981) described the capacity for hypothetico-deductive reasoning as the ability to be able to deal with not only objects and experiences but with hypotheses as well, with "the possible as well as the real".
Conclusions can now be deduced from hypotheses rather than just physical facts. This highlights the persons ability to make conclusions by going from general to specific (deductive reasoning).
Scientific-inductive reasoning is the ability to think like a scientist, to make conclusions by going from specific observations to generalisations. When people in this stage have been confronted by a problem they can think about it abstractly, and can think over each of the different variables and how they, or combinations of them would affect the situation while sytematically testing for these. A common problem used to study this type of reasoning is the pendulum problem in which young people are given strings of different lengths that can be attached to a pole, they are also given objects of various weights to hang from the string and make pendulums. The underlying problem is to find out what it is that makes the pendulum swing faster, the length of string, the weight of the pendulum, the height from which the weight is dropped or the force exerted on the weight when it is dropped (Bjorklund, 1995). It is not till children reach the formal operational stage that they can systematically go about solving this problem and arrive at the correct and logical conclusion.
Another structure that has developed over this period is reflective abstraction, a mechanism by which knowledge (such as logical-mathematical) can be gained. According to Wadsworth (1989) “reflective abstraction is internal thought or reflection based on available knowledge”. Analogies provide a good example in which to study reflective abstraction. Analogies are about constructing relationships between objects, and these relationships can only come about through reflective abstraction. "
More?
http://evolution.massey.ac.nz/assign2/MH/webpage.htm
Check out:
Smock, C.D. von Glassersfeld, E. (1974) "Piaget and the radical constructivist epistemology," Epistemology and education. Follow Through Publications:Athens, GA.
http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/EvG/cgi-bin/index.cgi?browse=chapter
Check out:
GST2
(General Systems Theory 2)
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