KNOWING AND ERRING: The Consolations of Error Essay on Developmental Epistemology

by Robert Kalechofsky, Ph.D.

pbk.    72 pgs

Description

This is a small but potent book, which joins the discipline of cognitive psychology with the philosophy of science.

Dr. Kalechofsky argues that an "evolution through error" not only takes place in individual cognitive growth, but in the cognitive growth of civilizations. Building on Thomas Kuhn's pivotal study, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and on Piaget's theory of cognition, Dr. Kalechofsky argues that the process by which this evolution in intellectual thought happens is by the replacement of "concrete" paradigms or metaphors with paradigms and metaphors that tend to be more abstract.

Thus, he places "error" within the history of science and intellectual thinking, rather than treating "erring" as an aberration. This is not an argument that "it is human to err," but a demonstration that error is not only unavoidable and natural but creative. Error is the soil out of which our intellectual adventures and progess grow, and he denounces the traditional Western attitude towards mistakes as intellectual embarrassments which are to be disguised and denied. This approach to mistakes places the study of the mind and the process of knowing at the center of the philosophy of science and mathematics, and liberates the intellectual process, which has important implications for the study of science and mathematics. Dr. Kalechofsky urges that teachers use their students' errors heuristically to elicit from them reflection upon their psychological, social and intellectual scaffolding, to use error as a means to refine their understanding.

Robert Kalechofsky is a philosopher of mathematics and science, with more than forty years of teaching and research in these fields, and has constructed mathematical models of Piaget's theory of cognition.