Abstract
The present study aimed at investigating the mechanism in the development of the recognition of nature, compared with Piaget's epistemology. Three fundamental hypotheses were proposed as follows.
1) If we give outside training suitably to children at preoperational thinking stage, they can acquire conservation of substance.
2) It is possible that five year old children will be able to acquire conservation of weight, volume and atomism without that of substance, if we suitably train them. The sequence of the acquisition of these concepts is never irreversible but reversible.
3) It is possible that the children of five, who have acquired conservation of substance by the synthetic judgement, can perform logical reversible operation in thinking as a result within the limit of the meaning about the proposition, when they transform the synthetic judgement into the analytic one.
In experiment I, Ss were individually questioned as to what degree they possessed conservation of substance. Subsequently, Ss were presented the facts different from their previous recongition, and this araused conceptual conflict. When Ss were finally tested whether conservation of substance had been acquired, the result obtained agreed with hypothesis I. In experiment II, the results obtained similarly agreed with hypothesis 2 and 3.
The results seem apparently inconsistent with Piaget's epistemology. In his opinion, the development of the recognition of nature depends on that of logical operation in thinking; that is to say, he interprets synthetic judgement subordinately, but he takes a serious view of reasoning out of measure. Such an epistemology as Piaget's is an aspect of of the mechanism in the development of the recognition of nature, but there should be another aspect as mentioned above. In the one hand, as Piaget says, the children acquire the concept by logical operation in thinking. On the other, they acquire the concept by synthetic judgement. These two aspects are inseparably related to each other, going hand in hand alternatively in the development of the recognition of nature.
