Our encounters with the physical world are filled with miraculous puzzles wind appears from somewhere heavy objects like oil tankers float onoceans yet smaller... » 

Our encounters with the physical world are filled with miraculous puzzles wind appears from somewhere heavy objects like oil tankers float onoceans yet smaller objects go to the bottom of our waterfilled buckets. Asadults instead of confronting a whole world we are reduced to driving fromone parking garage to another. The Childs Conception of Physical Causalitypart of the very beginning of the groundbreaking work of the Swiss naturalistJean Piaget is filled with creative experimental ideas for probing the mostsophisticated ways of thinking in children.The strength of Piagets research is evident in this collection of empiricaldata systematically organized by tasks that illuminate how things work.Piagets data are remarkably rich. In his new introduction Jaan Valsinerobserves that Piaget had no grand theoretical aims yet the books simple powercannot be ignored. Piagets great contribution to developmental psychology washis clinical method a tactic that integrated relevant aspects ofnaturalistic experiment interview and observation. Through this systematicinquiry we gain insight into childrens thinking.Reading Piaget will encourage the contemporary reader to think about the unityof psychological phenomena and their theoretical underpinnings. His wealth ofcreative experimental ideas probes into the most sophisticated ways of thinkingin children. Technologies change yet the creative curiosity of childrenremains basically unhindered by the consumer society. Piagets data preservethe reality of the original phenomena. As such this work will provide a wealthof information for developmental psychologists and those involved in the fieldofexperimental science. «