Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher and academic (1896–1980)
The first reason for my growing disaffection with the traditional methods of philosophy was caused in the main by the conflict, which I felt within myself, between the habits of verification of the biologist and the psychologist, and speculative reflection, which constantly tempted me, but which could not possibly be submitted to verification…
Two ever deepening convictions were forced on me … One is that there is a kind of intellectual dishonesty in making assertions in a domain concerned with facts, without a publicly verifiable method of testing, and in formal domains without a logistic one. The other is that sharpest possible distinction should at all times be made between personal improvisations, the dogma of a school or whatever is centered on the self or on a restricted group, and, on the other hand, the domains in which mutual agreement is possible, independently of metaphysical beliefs or of ideologies. …
My second reason for disaffection may well appear odd to pure philosophers. It refers to something which from the psycho-sociological point of view is very significant: this is the surprising dependence of philosophical ideas in relation to social or even political change. … I was very much struck, after the First World War (and still more so after the Second) by the repercussions that the social and political instability then prevailing in Europe had on the intellectual climate, and this naturally led me to doubt the objective and universal value of the philosophical standpoints adopted in such conditions.
Thus, even in those fields in which logic does not normally play a part, there exist outline structures which are the precursors of logical structures, and which can be formulated in terms of the algebra of logic. From a comparative point of view, these outline structures are of great interest. It is not inconceivable that a general theory of structures will at some future date be worked out, which will permit the comparative analysis of structures characterizing the different levels of development. This will relate the lower level outline structures to the logical structures characteristic of the higher stages of development. The use of the logical calculus in the description of neural networks on the one hand, and in cybernetic models on the other, shows that such a programme is not out of the question.
Classical logic believed it was possible to discover the actual structure of thought processes, and the general structures underlying the external world as well as the normative laws of the mind . . . As logic has perfected its formal rigor, logicians have ceased to interest themselves in the study of actual thought processes.
Cognitive processes seem, then, to be at one and the same time the outcome of organic autoregulation, reflecting its essential mechanisms, and the most highly differentiated organs of this regulation at the core of interactions with the environment, so much so that, in the case of man, these processes are being extended to the universe itself.
I … sent a program of research to the Rockefeller Foundation. … [Their] questions were almost all of a surprising pertinence. I remember the practical questions … But I particularly remember the theoretical questions, due among others to [Shannon] Weaver, the mathematician interested in information theory who was then in charge of the Department of Science at the Foundation: How will you find interesting epistomological ideas, for example, the theory of relativity, in studying children who know nothing and who in any case are brought up in the intellectual tradition dating from Newton? …
I had the luck to be able to remark … that Einstein himself had advised me in 1928 to study the formation of the intuitions of velocity in order to see if they depended on those of duration, and that further, when I had the good fortune to see Einstein again at Princeton …, he was quite delighted by the reactions of nonconservation of children of four to six years (they deny that a liquid conserves its quantity when it is poured from one glass into another of a different shape: ‘There is more to drink than before,‘ etc.), and was greatly astonished that the elementary concepts of conservation were only constructed toward seven or eight years.