Mind, Body, World- Foundations of Cognitive Science, 2013a

operations, “actions which are quite elementary: putting things in piles, separating
piles into lots, making alignments, and so on” (Inhelder & Piaget, 1964, p. 291).
Other theories of cognitive development share the Piagetian emphasis on the
role of the world, but elaborate the notion of what aspects of the world are involved
(Vygotsky, 1986). Vygotsky (1986), for example, highlighted the role of social systems—a
different conceptualization of the external world—in assisting cognitive
development. Vygotsky used the term zone of proximal development to define the
difference between a child’s ability to solve problems without aid and their ability
to solve problems when provided support or assistance. Vygotsky was strongly critical
of instructional approaches that did not provide help to children as they solved
problems.
Vygotsky (1986) recognized that sources of support for development were not
limited to the physical world. He expanded the notion of worldly support to include
social and cultural factors: “The true direction of the development of thinking is not
from the individual to the social, but from the social to the individual” (p. 36). For
example, to Vygotsky language was a tool for supporting cognition:
Real concepts are impossible without words, and thinking in concepts does not
exist beyond verbal thinking. That is why the central moment in concept formation,
and its generative cause, is a specific use of words as functional ‘tools.’
(Vygotsky, 1986, p. 107)
Clark (1997, p. 45) wrote: “We may often solve problems by ‘piggy-backing’ on reliable
environmental properties. This exploitation of external structure is what I mean
by the term scaffolding.” Cognitive scaffolding—the use of the world to support or
extend thinking—is characteristic of theories in embodied cognitive science. Clark
views scaffolding in the broad sense of a world or structure that descends from
Vygotsky’s theory:
Advanced cognition depends crucially on our abilities to dissipate reasoning: to
diffuse knowledge and practical wisdom through complex social structures, and to
reduce the loads on individual brains by locating those brains in complex webs of
linguistic, social, political, and institutional constraints. (Clark, 1997, p. 180)
While the developmental theories of Piaget and Vygotsky are departures from typical
classical cognitive science in their emphasis on action and scaffolding, they are
very traditional in other respects. American psychologist Sylvia Scribner pointed
out that these two theorists, along with Newell and Simon, shared Aristotle’s “preoccupation
with modes of thought central to theoretical inquiry—with logical operations,
scientific concepts, and problem solving in symbolic domains,” maintaining
“Aristotle’s high esteem for theoretical thought and disregard for the practical”
(Scribner & Tobach, 1997, p. 338).
226 Chapter 5