Epistemological conceptions: genetic epistemology

ABSTRACT

Genetic Epistemology defends that the individual goes through several stages of development throughout his life. The

development is observed by the overlap of the balance between assimilation and accommodation, resulting in adaptation.

Thus, in this formulation, the human being assimilates the data he obtains from the outside, but once he already has a mental

structure that is not “empty”, he needs to adapt these data to the existing mental structure. The process of modifying oneself

is called accommodation. This scheme reveals that no knowledge arrives from outside without suff ering some alteration

by the individual, and that everything one learns is infl uenced by what one has already learned. The assimilation occurs

when the information is incorporated into the structures already existing in this dynamic cognitive structure, while the

adaptation occurs when the organism is modifi ed in some way in order to dynamically incorporate the new information.

Finally, from a modern thought that, seeking the unusual synthesis between the biological and the logical-mathematical,

seems to find its limits in the even more unusual deconstruction to which all thought systematically tends nowadays: that

of itself building itself in an essentially enlightened way.

Keywords: Epistemology, genetic epistemology; knowledge, educational theories.