The following theory of development, which is particularly concerned
with the development of cognitive functions, is impossible to
understand if one does not begin by analyzing in detail the biologic
presuppositions from which it stems and the espistemological consequences
in which it ends. Indeed, the fundamental postulate that is the basis of
the ideas summarized here is that the same problems and the same types
of explanations can be found in the three following processes:
a. The adaptation of an organism to its environment during its
growth, together with the interactions and autoregulations which characterize
the development of the "epigenetic system." (Epigenesis in its
embryologic sense is always determined both internally and externally.)
b. The adaptation of intelligence in the course of the construction
of its own structures, which depends as much on progressive internal
coordinations as on information acquired through experience.