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LIT-837: Structuralism

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StatusActive — skimmed 2026-10-09 (NOTE-618), thinly: the publisher's Google Books preview of the 2015 reissue served only 17 pages of text, pp. 3–63 at one page in four and p. 69, all in chs. I–IV, and none of the chapters on linguistics, the social sciences or philosophy, nor the conclusion. Worth reading as Piaget's definition of structure by wholeness, transformation and self-regulation, and for his distinction between logico-mathematical structures, whose operations all have inverses (groups), and linguistic, social and psychological structures, whose transformations unfold in time under regulations that are "not entirely reversible". He argues that a structure must be "governed from within" to be real, and defines the subject as "the center of functional activity". Read it with the caveat that the skim saw the argument in fragments.
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Tagsphilosophy-of-science, mathematics, cognition, linguistics, social-science
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-618 — Structuralism

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Jean Piaget (1970), Structuralism, translated and edited by Chaninah Maschler, New York: Basic Books, vi + 153 pp.; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971; reissued as Structuralism (Psychology Revivals), Psychology Press, 2015 — DOI-10.4324/9781315722368

Key takeaways

From a skim of 17 pages of chs. I–IV, one page in four (NOTE-618); the chapters on linguistics, the social sciences and philosophy were not seen.

  • Structure is defined by wholeness, transformation and self-regulation. The elements of a structure “are subordinated to laws”, and those laws give the whole properties its elements lack (p. 7). “All known structures—from mathematical groups to kinship systems—are, without exception, systems of transformation”, though “transformation need not be a temporal process” (p. 11).
  • Two grades of self-regulation (p. 15). In logic and mathematics an operation is “a ‘perfect’ regulation”: every operation has its inverse in the system. Linguistic, sociological and psychological structures transform in time under regulations “not entirely reversible”.
  • Groups as prototype (p. 19). The group concept comes from “reflective abstraction”, from coordinations of our actions, not from properties of things. With Bourbaki, group structure “is quite independent of the intrinsic nature of its elements” (p. 23).
  • Form and content are relative (p. 35). Each level is form to the one below and content to the one above, so the limits of formalization move.
  • Against “pure” structures (pp. 55–69). Gestalt structures are “functionless and detached from the subject”. Real structures must be “governed from within”, and the subject is “the center of functional activity”.

Standing in the record

Filed on 2026-10-09 from the manuscript bibliography of 2026-10-09 (work what-survives-translation) at the owner’s request, as the English edition of the French original the record already holds, LIT-802 (Le structuralisme, Presses Universitaires de France, 1968). The two entries are separate filings of one work in two languages. The French has not been read. The English was skimmed on 2026-10-09 from a publisher’s preview (NOTE-618), which covers about an eighth of the book. See the curation entry of that day. A fuller reading needs a copy of chs. V–VII and the conclusion.

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