Piaget as a Visionary Thinker

When as a young man Piaget called his vocation a divine mission and characterized his intellectual journey as a quest he revealed something significant about his own motives. Piaget's mission was the construction of a new worldview to replace the one which had so thoroughly bewildered him when he was a young thinker. The system of thought which he eventually constructed was one for which he claimed the status science. However, were his own standards to be applied rigorously, his view would be more accurately described as a "wisdom". "Wisdom is necessary", says Piaget, "because man also lives, takes sides, believes in a multiplicity of values, orders them hierarchically and thus gives meaning to his existence by decisions that constantly go beyond the limits of his actual knowledge".As a young man Piaget was a visionary thinker; as an old man he had become more humble and denied that his thought qualified as a worldview. But, what is this view which Piaget calls a wisdom? It is his best effort to respond to humankind's profoundest questions regarding life's origins, its destiny, the nature of persons, and the basis for certainty for that creature whose nature is not only to live but to live consciously.Once upon a time these questions were answered in terms of Christians belief. Piaget finally comes to answer them in terms of a belief of another sort, i.e, his commitment to science as he conceives it, which commitment itself goes beyond the limits of absolute knowledge.Goot, Mary V. is the author of 'Piaget as a Visionary Thinker' with ISBN 9780932269249 and ISBN 0932269249.