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The sciences achieved consensus amongst their practitioners through emancipation from philosophy. In the first half of the 20th century, philosophers began to align themselves with science, and most contemporary philosophers call themselves naturalists. Epistemology was still largely considered a philosophical prerogative until Quine’s paper “Epistemology naturalized” (1969). Opinion is now divided. Ironically, the prodigious work that secured Jean Piaget’s reputation as a cognitive developmental psychologist was actually carried out largely in service of epistemology. Disillusioned with philosophical speculation and with a background in empirical science (Piaget trained as a biologist), Piaget conceived a method based on psychological and historical evidence to investigate epistemological questions scientifically. In this paper, I outline his genetic-epistemological method and locate it in the discourse on naturalism. I conclude by classifying genetic epistemology according to Goldman’s classification of naturalistic epistemologies and by assessing it in the light of criticism typically levelled at naturalistic epistemologies, before highlighting some salient points for a future scientific epistemology.

Piagetian structuralism, notably a genetic epistemological perspective on mathematics, physics and biology, represents a unique and fruitful articulation of the heterogeneous structuralist movement. After their initial success, mathematical structures, traced and investigated from different points of view, end up constituting didactic and research “paradigms” that can be used on several levels; in a similar way, physics – closely related to mathematics – initially considered its own “objects” to be endowed with structure: yet, while such structure was initially understood in a material sense, nowadays it is studied with a higher degree of abstraction (e.g. in an energetic, interactive, virtual sense). Biology has become (and remains) an à la page subject, but also presents an epistemological battle between orthodox mechanism and vitalism, between eternal substances and continuous transformations, that is, between fixed structures and dynamic structuring. These conclusions lead us to re-evaluate the up-to-dateness and perspectives of Piagetian structuralism, to project it beyond classical structuralism and, maybe, to turn it into an unusual and promising post-structuralist trend.

«Epistemic» Children and «Socio-Affective» Children: What are the Links between These Theoretical Spheres of Research? In most currently available textbooks of developmental psychology, the chapters dealing with cognitive development, affective development and social development are presented separately, even if these aspects are strongly interconnected in child development and should not be considered as separate issues. Despite this, not many studies have attempted to establish connections between the study of cognitive, affective and social development. This contribution aims to frame, within a historical perspective, the attempts made in psychological literature to highlight the links between Jean Piaget’s genetic epistemology, psychoanalysis and John Bowlby’s theory of attachment. Significant attempts in this regard were made by Jean Piaget himself, who already in 1920 published two articles on psychoanalysis and its relations with child development, while from the early 1950s John Bowlby started investigating these issues, opening up to the empirical evidence provided by Piaget’s studies. It therefore appears of great interest to go into the empirical facts and theoretical positions discussed by these two famous scholars in the field of child development.

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