11.3 Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development 189 ment information exchange|stage life system, e.g. Oparin controlled mainly by [Opa52] water droplet, innate system struc- or Cairns-Smith [CS90] tures or environment clay-based protolife info exchange heavily|erational” stage: sys-|tem, e.g. Oparin wa- guided by adaptively|tematic internal world-|ter droplet w/ basic internally-created model guides world-|metabolism system structures exploration resentation of informa-|explicit logical/experi-|nal entities that “stand tion exchange process |mental learning about|for” aspects of organ- how to cognize in var-jism and environment, ious contexts thus enabling complex epligenes1s modification based |stage: purposive self-|code-patterns guide on this symbolic|modification of basic/their own modification representation mental processes via influencing culture Table 11.1: General Systems Theory of Development: Parallels Between Development of Mind and Origin of Life Indeed, Piaget viewed developmental stages as emerging from general “algebraic” principles rather than as being artifacts of the particulars of human psychology. But, Piaget’s stages are probably best viewed as a general interpretive framework rather than a precise scientific theory. Our suspicion is that once the empirical science of developmental psychology has progressed further, it will become clearer how to fit the various data into a broad Piaget-like framework, perhaps differing in many details from what Piaget described in his works. Piaget conceived of child development in four stages, each roughly identified with an age group, and corresponding closely to the system-theoretic stages mentioned above: e infantile, corresponding to the automatic stage mentioned above — Example: Grasping blocks, piling blocks on top of each other, copying words that are heard ® preoperational and concrete operational, corresponding to the adaptive stage men- tioned above — Example: Building complex blocks structures, from