Jean Piaget - Father of Child Psychology

I think he was a genius. I think he gave us the categories but that it is other people that interpret his work too rigidly. He provided the framework for understanding which would lead to the new discipline of Child Psychology.

I totally agree with most of what you say. I think, though, that everyone has standards based on personal interpretations. I like to think in continua, I think that everything in the world is continuous. There are social criteria for putting labels on things, as perceptual thresholds, for instance. I don't think of piaget as a genius because I think he was too rigid with his criteria. How many (discrete) concrete operations must I solve in order to be in that particular stage? Who cares, I'm 22.

P.S. You are probably a smart guy too (most people think in terms of categories, not continua), but not a genius, by your own definition. You classify people into genius/not-genius based on categories, not continua ("geniuses think in continua, not in stages...").

Piaget was probably a genius because he was writing peer-reviewed articles before he could even go to college. Some things cannot be studied as continua (e.g., sometimes we're interested in knowing whether an infant can speak 1 word or zero words, walk or not). There may be underlying processes that can be studied as continua, which may be related to Piaget's stages, but that doesn't diminish the genius of Piaget for realizing that certain cognitive abilities are not present at different ages.

Smart guy, I'm not sure if a genius. Geniuses think in continua, not in stages...