Psychology Revivals

Structuralism

Originally published in English in 1971, structuralism was an

increasingly important method of analysis in disciplines as diverse as
mathematics, physics, biology, psychology, linguistics, sociology,
anthropology and philosophy. Piaget here offers both a definitive
introduction to the method and a brilliant critique of the principal
structuralist positions. He explains and evaluates the work of the main
people at work in the field – Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault,
Talcott Parsons, Noam Chomsky – and concludes that structuralism
has a rich and fruitful future ahead of it.

An indispensable work for serious students and working scholars in

almost every field, the book is also an important addition to Piaget’s
life-long study of the relationship of language and thought.
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Structuralism

Jean Piaget
Originally published in French as
Le Structuralisme
by Presses Universitaires de France, 1968

© 1968 Presses Universitaires de France

First published in 1971

by Routledge & Kegan Paul

This edition first published in 2015 by Psychology Press

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A Library of Congress record exists under ISBN: 0710070160

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STRUCTURALISM

Jean Piaget
Translated and edited by CHANINAH MASCHLER

LONDON
ROUTLEDGE AND KEGAN PAUL
 TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

I SHOULD LIKE TO THANK Professor Peter Caws of the City

University of New York for reading and mending this trans-
lation. Against his, possibly better, judgment, I have encum-
bered the text with many footnotes and references which
were not in Piaget's original text. My feeling was that without
these the translation would fail in its primary purpose, that
of orienting the uninitiated American or English reader.
The translation is at times more than free, but clarity and
readability seemed to require this.

New York CHANINAH MASCHLER

Originally published in French as Le Structuralisme

by Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1968
© 1968 by Presses Universitaires de France.

First published in Great Britain 1971

by Rout ledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.
Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane
London, EC4V 5EL

Printed in Great Britain by

Unwin Brothers Limited,
The Gresham Press, Old Woking, Surrey, England
A member of the Staples Printing Group
I S B N 0 7100 7044 6
 CONTENTS

I INTRODUCTION AND
L O C A T I O N OF P R O B L E M S 3
1. Definitions
2. Wholeness
3. Transformations
4. Self-Regulation

II M A T H E M A T I C A L AND
LOGICAL S T R U C T U R E S 17
5. Groups
6. "Parent Structures''
7. Logical Structures
8. The Limits of Formalization

III PHYSICAL AND BIOLOGICAL S T R U C T U R E S 37

9. Physical Structures and Causality
10. Organic Structures

IV PSYCHOLOGICAL S T R U C T U R E S 52
11. Gestalt Psychology and the Beginnings of
Structuralism in Psychology
12. Structure and the Genesis of Intelligence
13. Structure and Function
vi CONTENTS

V LINGUISTIC STRUCTURALISM 74
14. Synchronic Structuralism
15. Transformational Structuralism and the
Relations between Ontogenesis and Phylogenesis
16. Are Linguistic Structures Social Formations,
Innate, or f/ze Results of Equilibration?
17. Linguistic and Logical Structures

VI STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS IN THE

SOCIAL S C I E N C E S 97
18. "Analytic" versus "Global" Structuralism
19. The Anthropological Structuralism of
Claude Levi-Strauss

VII S T R U C T U R A L I S M AND P H I L O S O P H Y 120

20. Structuralism and Dialectic
21. Structuralism without Structures

CONCLUSION 136

S E L E C T E D BIBLIOGRAPHY 145

INDEX 147
STRUCTURALISM
Page Intentionally Left Blank
 I
INTRODUCTION AND
LOCATION OF
PROBLEMS

1. Definitions

Structuralism is often said to be hard to define because

it has taken too many different forms for a common
denominator to be in evidence: the structures invoked by
the several "structuralists" have acquired increasingly
diverse significations. Nevertheless, upon examining and
comparing the various meanings it has acquired in the
sciences and, unfortunately, at cocktail parties, a synthe-
sis seems feasible, though only on the condition of
separating two problems which, while always conjoined
in fact, are logically distinct. The first of these problems
is to make out the nature of the affirmative ideal that
goes with the very idea of structure, the ideal manifested
4 STRUCTURALISM

in the conquests and hopes of every variety of structural-

ism. The second is to describe and analyze the critical
intentions attendant on the birth and development of any
particular variety of structuralism.
To dissociate the two problems is to admit in effect that
there really is an ideal of intelligibility held in common,
or at least aspired after, by all structuralists, even though
their critical objectives vary enormously. For the mathe-
maticians, structuralism is opposed to compartmentali-
zation, which it counteracts by recovering unity through
isomorphisms. For several generations of linguists, struc-
turalism is chiefly a departure from the diachronic study
of isolated linguistic phenomena which prevailed in the
nineteenth century and a turn to the investigation of
synchronously functioning unified language systems.1 In
psychology, structuralism has long combatted the atom-
istic tendency to reduce wholes to their prior elements.
And in current philosophical discussions we find struc-
turalism tackling historicism, functionalism, sometimes
even all theories that have recourse to the human subject.
So, obviously, if we try to define structuralism nega-
tively, in terms of its opposition to other positions, and
refuse to consider it apart from these, we shall find
nothing but diversity and all the contradictions that are
linked with the vagaries in the history of the sciences and
of ideas. On the other hand, once we focus on the positive
content of the idea of structure, we come upon at least
two aspects that are common to all varieties of struc-
turalism: first, an ideal (perhaps a hope) of intrinsic
intelligibility supported by the postulate that structures
1
For a definition of the terms "diachronic" and "synchronic"
see the quotation from Saussure in Note 1, Chapter V. [Trans.]
INTRODUCTION AND LOCATION OF PROBLEMS 5

are self-sufficient and that, to grasp them, we do not have

to make reference to all sorts of extraneous elements;
second, certain insights—to the extent that one has suc-
ceeded in actually making out certain structures, their
theoretical employment has shown that structures in gen-
eral have, despite their diversity, certain common and
perhaps necessary properties.
As a first approximation, we may say that a structure
is a system of transformations. Inasmuch as it is a system
and not a mere collection of elements and their proper-
ties, these transformations involve laws: the structure is
preserved or enriched by the interplay of its transforma-
tion laws, which never yield results external to the sys-
tem nor employ elements that are external to it. In short,
the notion of structure is comprised of three key ideas:
the idea of wholeness, the idea of transformation, and the
idea of self-regulation.
The discovery of structure may, either immediately or
at a much later stage, give rise to formalization. Such
formalization is, however, always the creature of the
theoretician, whereas structure itself exists apart from
him. Formalization sometimes proceeds by direct trans-
lation into logical or mathematical equations, sometimes
passes through the intermediate stage of constructing
a cybernetic model, the level of formalization depending
upon the choice of the theoretician. But, it is worth re-
peating, the mode of existence of the structure he earlier
discovered must be determined separately for each par-
ticular area of investigation.
The notion of transformation allows us to delimit the
problem of definition in a preliminary way; for if it were
necessary to cover formalism in every sense of the word
6 STRUCTURALISM

by the idea of structure, all philosophical positions that

are not strictly empiricist would be let in again—those
which invoke Platonic forms or Husserlian essences, not
to forget Kant's brand of formalism, and even several
varieties of empiricism (for example, the logical positiv-
ism of the Vienna Circle, who stress syntactic and se-
mantic forms in their analysis of logic). Now in the nar-
rower sense we are about to define, current logical theory
only rarely takes account of "structures," for in many
ways it has remained subservient to a rather stubborn
atomistic tendency and is only beginning to open up to
structuralism.
In this little book we shall, therefore, confine ourselves
to the kinds of structuralism that are to be met in mathe-
matics and the several empirical sciences, already a suf-
ficiently venturesome undertaking. And in conclusion
we shall take up some of the philosophical movements
more or less inspired by the various kinds of structuralism
that have sprung up in the social sciences. But first we
must elaborate somewhat on the definition of structural-
ism in general that is here proposed, else it will be hard
to understand why a notion as abstract as that of a
"system closed under transformation" should raise such
high hopes in all domains of inquiry.

2. Wholeness

That wholeness is a defining mark of structures almost

goes without saying, since all structuralists—mathema-
ticians, linguists, psychologists, or what have you—are
at one in recognizing as fundamental the contrast be-
INTRODUCTION AND LOCATION OF PROBLEMS 7

tween structures and aggregates, the former being wholes,

the latter composites formed of elements that are inde-
pendent of the complexes into which they enter. To in-
sist on this distinction is not to deny that structures have
elements, but the elements of a structure are subordinated
to laws, and it is in terms of these laws that the structure
qua whole or system is defined. Moreover, the laws gov-
erning a structure's composition are not reducible to
cumulative one-by-one association of its elements: they
confer on the whole as such over-all properties distinct
from the properties of its elements. Here is an example of
what we have in mind: the integers do not exist in isola-
tion from one another, nor were they discovered one by
one in some accidental sequence and then, finally, united
into a whole. They do not come upon the scene except
as ordered, and this order of the integers is associated
with structural properties (of groups, fields, rings, and
the like), which are quite different from the properties
of number individuals, each of which is even or odd,
prime or non-prime, and so on.
The idea of wholeness does, however, raise a good
many problems, of which we shall take up just the two
principal ones, the first bearing on its nature, the other
on its mode of formation (or preformation).
It would be a mistake to think that, in all domains, the
epistemological alternatives reduce to just two options:
either admit wholes defined in terms of their structural
laws, or allow only for atomistic compounding of prior
elements. No matter what area of science we subject to
scrutiny, whether we consider the perceptual structures
of the Gestalt psychologists or the social wholes (classes
or entire societies) of sociologists and anthropologists,
8 STRUCTURALISM

we find that not one but two alternatives to atomism have

made their way in the history of ideas, only one of which
appears to us in tune with the spirit of modern struc-
turalism.
The first consists in simply reversing the sequence that
appeared natural to those who wanted to proceed from
the simple to the complex (from sense impressions to
perceptual complexes, from individuals to social groups,
and so forth). The whole which this sort of critic of
atomism posits at the outset is viewed as the outcome of
some sort of emergence, vaguely conceived as a law of
nature and not further analyzed. Thus, when Comte pro-
posed to explain men in terms of humanity, not humanity
in terms of men, or when Durkheim thought of the social
whole as emerging from the union of individuals in much
the same way as molecules are formed by the union of
atoms, or when the Gestalt psychologists believed they
could discern immediate wholes in primary perception
comparable to the field effects that figure in electromag-
netism, they did indeed remind us that a whole is not the
same as a simple juxtaposition of previously available
elements, and for this they deserve our gratitude; but by
viewing the whole as prior to its elements or contempo-
raneous with their "contact," they simplified the problem
to such an extent as to risk bypassing all the central ques-
tions—questions about the nature of a whole's laws of
composition.
Over and beyond the schemes of atomist association
on the one hand and emergent totalities on the other,
there is, however, a third, that of operational structural-
ism. It adopts from the start a relational perspective, ac-
cording to which it is neither the elements nor a whole
INTRODUCTION AND LOCATION OF PROBLEMS 9

that comes about in a manner one knows not how, but

the relations among elements that count. In other words,
the logical procedures or natural processes by which the
whole is formed are primary, not the whole, which is
consequent on the system's laws of composition, or the
elements.
But at this point a second, and much more serious,
problem springs up, the really central problem of struc-
turalism: Have these composite wholes always been
composed? How can this be? Did not someone com-
pound them? Or were they initially (and are they still) in
process of composition? To put the question in a differ-
ent way: Do structures call for formation, or is only some
sort of eternal preformation compatible with them?
Structuralism, it seems, must choose between structure-
less genesis on the one hand and ungenerated wholes or
forms on the other; the former would make it revert to
that atomistic association to which empiricism has ac-
customed us; the latter constantly threaten to make it
lapse into a theory of Husserlian essences, Platonic forms,
or Kantian a priori forms of synthesis. Unless, of course,
there is a way of passing between the horns of this
dilemma.
As is to be expected, it is on this problem that opinion
is most divided, some going so far as to contend that the
problem of the genesis of structures cannot so much as
be formulated because structure is of its very nature non-
temporal (as if this were not in its own way a solution
of the problem, namely, the choice of a preformational
view of the origin of structures).
Actually, the problem we now are discussing arises
with the notion of wholeness itself. It can be narrowed
10 STRUCTURALISM

down once we take the second characteristic of structures,

namely, their being systems of transformations rather
than of static forms, seriously.

3. Transformations

If the character of structured wholes depends on their

laws of composition, these laws must of their very nature
be structuring: it is the constant duality, or bipolarity, of
always being simultaneously structuring and structured
that accounts for the success of the notion of law or rule
employed by structuralists. Like Cournot's "order" 2 (a
special case of the structures treated in modern algebra),
a structure's laws of composition are defined "implicitly,"3
i.e., as governing the transformations of the system which
they structure.
When one considers the history of structuralism in
linguistics and psychology, this last statement may seem
somewhat surprising: In linguistics, structuralism started
with the work of Saussure, which does not seem to bear
out our claim; moreover, Saussure used the single word
"system" to cover both laws of synchronic opposition

2
The reference is to Augustin Cournot's Researches into the
Mathematical Principles of Wealth (1838; reprinted, New York:
Kelley, 1927), the first systematic treatise on mathematical eco-
nomics. See Oskar Morgenstern's article on mathematical eco-
nomics in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, V, 364ff. [Trans.]
5
For a brief account of the notion of "implicit definition"
see, for example, Hermann Weyl, Philosophy of Mathematics
and Natural Science (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1949), pp. 24ff. [Trans.]
INTRODUCTION AND LOCATION OF PROBLEMS 11
4
and laws of synchronic equilibration. In Gestalt psychol-
ogy, the perceptual forms that are said to have a Gestalt
character are, generally speaking, static. But it is unwise
to view an intellectual current exclusively in terms of its
origin; it should be seen in its flow. Besides, even in their
beginnings, linguistic and psychological structuralism
were associated with the dawning of ideas of transforma-
tion. Synchronic language systems are not immobile;
such systems exclude or allow for novelty (acceptance or
exclusion being a function of requirements determined by
the system's laws of opposition and connection). And it
did not take long before Saussure's notion of some sort
of dynamic equilibrium became elaborated into a theory
of style by Bally.5 Admittedly, we are not yet in the
presence of Chomsky's "transformational grammar," but
Bally's stylistic is headed toward the idea of transforma-
tion, at least in the weak sense of "individual variation."
As for psychological Gestalten, their inventors from the
beginning spoke of laws of organization by which the
sensory given is transformed, and the probabilistic inter-
pretation we can today give of such laws accentuates this
transformational aspect of perception.
Indeed, all known structures—from mathematical
groups to kinship systems—are, without exception, sys-
tems of transformation. But transformation need not be a
temporal process: 1 + 1 "make" 2; 3 "follows hard on"

4
See, for example, pp. 107, 117, 119-122 in Saussure's Course
in General Linguistics, ed. C. Bally and A. Sechehaye, trans. W.
Baskin (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959). [Trans.]
5
C. Bally, Precis de stylistique (Geneva, 1905) and Traite
de stylistique frangaise (Heidelberg, 1909). [Trans.]
B
12 STRUCTURALISM

2; clearly, the "making" and "following" here meant are

not temporal processes. On the other hand, transforma-
tion can be a temporal process: getting married "takes
time." Were it not for the idea of transformation, struc-
tures would lose all explanatory import, since they would
collapse into static forms.
The very centrality of the idea of transformation makes
the question of origin, that is, of the relation between
transformation and formation, inevitable. Certainly, the
elements of a structure must be differentiated from the
transformation laws which apply to them. Because it is
the former which undergo transformation or change, it
is easy to think of the latter as immutable. Even in
varieties of structuralism which are not formalized in the
strict sense, one finds outstanding workers who are so
little concerned about psychological origins that they
jump straight from the stability of transformation rules to
their innateness. Noam Chomsky is a case in point: for
him generative grammars appear to demand innate syn-
tactic laws, as if stability could not be explained in terms
of equilibrium mechanisms, and as if the appeal to
biology implied by the hypothesis of innateness did not
pose problems of formation just as complex as those in-
volved in a psychological account.
Now the implicit hope of anti-historical or anti-genetic
structuralist theories is that structure might in the end be
given a non-temporal mathematical or logical founda-
tion (Chomsky has, in fact, reduced his grammars to a
formal "monoid" structure). 0 But if what is wanted is a
6
The reference here, as also on pp. 71 and 78, may be to
Chomsky's paper in the Handbook of Mathematical Psychology,
ed. R. D. Luce, R. R. Bush, and E. Galanter (New York: John
INTRODUCTION AND LOCATION OF PROBLEMS 13

general theory of structure, such as must meet the re-

quirements of an interdisciplinary epistemology, then one
can hardly avoid asking, when presented with such non-
temporal systems as a mathematical group or a set of
subsets, how these systems were obtained—unless, of
course, one is willing to stay put in the heavens of trans-
cendentalism. One could proceed by postulate, as in
axiomatic systems, but from the epistemological point of
view this is an elegant way of cheating which takes ad-
vantage of the prior labor of those who constructed the
intuitive system without which there would be nothing
to axiomatize. As we shall see in Chapter II, Godel's
conception of a structure's relative "power" or "weak-
ness" introduces a genealogical relation among structures
which provides a method less open to epistemological
objections. But once we take this tack the central prob-
lem, not as yet of the history or psychogenesis of struc-
tures but of their construction, and of the relation
between structuralism and constructivism, is no longer
avoidable. This will, then, be one among our several
themes.

4. Self-Regulation

The third basic property of structures is, as we said, that

they are self-regulating, self-regulation entailing self-
Wiley, 1963-1965), where he says (2.274): "A set that includes
an identity and is closed under an associative law of composition
is called a monoid. Because monoids satisfy three of the four
postulates of a group, they are sometimes called semigroups. A
group is a monoid, all of whose elements have inverses." Syn-
tactic Structures makes no mention of "monoids." [Trans.]
14 STRUCTURALISM

maintenance and closure. Let us start by considering the

two derivative properties: what they add up to is that the
transformations inherent in a structure never lead beyond
the system but always engender elements that belong to
it and preserve its laws. Again an example will help to
clarify: In adding or subtracting any two whole numbers,
another whole number is obtained, and one which satis-
fies the laws of the "additive group" of whole numbers.
It is in this sense that a structure is "closed," a notion
perfectly compatible with the structure's being considered
a substructure of a larger one; but in being treated as a
substructure, a structure does not lose its own boundaries:
the larger structure does not "annex" the substructure;
if anything, we have a confederation, so that the laws of
the substructure are not altered but conserved and the
intervening change is an enrichment rather than an im-
poverishment.
These properties of conservation along with stability
of boundaries despite the construction of indefinitely
many new elements presuppose that structures are self-
regulating. There can be no doubt that it is this latter
conception which makes the idea of structure so im-
portant and which accounts for the high hopes it raises
in all domains of inquiry: Once an area of knowledge
has been reduced to a self-regulating system or "struc-
ture," the feeling that one has at last come upon its inner-
most source of movement is hardly avoidable. Now self-
regulation may be achieved by various procedures or
processes, and these can be ranked in order of increasing
complexity; we are thus brought back to our earlier
question about a system's construction, i.e., in the last
analysis, its formation.
INTRODUCTION AND LOCATION OF PROBLEMS 15

At the highest level (though it should be remembered

that what we call the top of the pyramid may be viewed
as its base by others) self-regulation proceeds by the
application of perfectly explicit rules, these rules being,
of course, the very ones that define the structure under
consideration. It might therefore be urged against us that
talk about self-regulation is quite empty, since it refers
either to the laws of the structure under consideration,
and it goes without saying that they "regulate" it, or it
refers to the mathematician or logician who "operates"
on the elements of the system, and that he operates cor-
rectly under normal circumstances again goes without
saying. Granted all this, there still remains the question:
Just what is an operation structurally considered? From
the cybernetic point of view, an operation is a "perfect"
regulation. What this means is that an operational system
is one which excludes errors before they are made, be-
cause every operation has its inverse in the system (e.g.,
subtraction is the inverse of addition, +n — n — 0) or, to
put it differently, because every operation is reversible, an
"erroneous result" is simply not an element of the system
(if +n — n 7*^0, then n^n).
But there is, of course, an immense class of structures
which are not strictly logical or mathematical, that is,
whose transformations unfold in time: linguistic struc-
tures, sociological structures, psychological structures,
and so on. Such transformations are governed by laws
("regulations" in the cybernetic sense of the word) which
are not in the strict sense "operations," because they are
not entirely reversible (in the sense in which multiplica-
tion is reversible by division or addition by subtraction).
Transformation laws of this kind depend upon the inter-
16 STRUCTURALISM

play of anticipation and correction (feedback). As we

shall see in Section 10, the range of application of feed-
back mechanisms is enormous.
Finally, there are regularities in the non-technical sense
of the word which depend upon far simpler structural
mechanisms, on rhythmic mechanisms such as pervade
biology and human life at every level.7 Rhythm too is
self-regulating, by virtue of symmetries and repetitions.
Though the self-regulation that is here involved is of a
much more elementary sort, it would not do to exclude
rhythmic systems from the domain of structure.
Rhythm, regulation, operation—these are the three
basic mechanisms of self-regulation and self-maintenance.
One may, if one so desires, view them as the "real" stages
of a structure's "construction," or, reversing the sequence,
one may use operational mechanisms of a quasi-Platonic
and non-temporal sort as a "basis" from which the
others are then in some manner "derived."

7
The study of such biological rhythms and periodicities (i.e.,
cycles of approximately 24 hours, which are remarkably general)
has in recent years been turned into an entire new discipline
with its own specialized mathematical and experimental tech-
niques.
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