A CREATIVE COGNITION 209Piaget strug gled to describe the nature of logico- mathematical struc-
tures in formal terms, but never satisfactorily.^9 Some further grounding
of these concepts in the real informational structures of experience is ob-
viously needed, and I return to that prob lem below. Obviously, there is
affi nity here with the covariation par ameters and structural grammars I
have described as the basis of intelligent functions at other levels, from
molecular networks to brain networks.
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Th ese are the three sets of princi ples to be found under lying models of
cognition. However, it is worth mentioning in passing that these ideas
have not formed in psychologists’ heads as if in a vacuum. Instead they
have been aspirated out of the experience of those psychologists in their
own social and po liti cal circumstances. Psychologists, aft er all, are re-
cruited and paid for by special institutions— employment, education,
law, mental health— dealing with the needs and prob lems arising from
the maintenance of a par tic u lar social order.
So they have been associated with diff er ent ideological and po liti cal
frameworks. From the time of ancient Greece and Plato’s Republic, nativ-
ism has been associated with authoritarian regimes with preformed
knowledge structures and social ranks. Associationism has been associated
with seemingly benign periods emphasizing learning and the training of
minds, albeit through shallow, utilitarian, princi ples. Constructivism has
tended to refl ect deeper princi ples of renewal and revolution.
COGNITION TODAYTh e fi eld of cognition has produced a wonderful array of fi ndings. But
they have been mostly confi ned to highly specifi c examples of cognition
related to highly specifi c models or theories. Th ere has been no agreed-on
perspective except in very general terms. Th is needs to be remembered
in discussions about mea sur ing cognitive abilities and grading people
by them.
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