<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1"> <title></title> </head> <body> Alex wrote: <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid20060810004101.86054.qmail@web51305.mail.yahoo.com"> <pre wrap="">Joanna wrote: Somebody realized, oh, twenty years ago, that ALL of Piaget's testing and foundational work on the development of children's learning was based on experiments on boys. Now Piaget was a smart and creative scientist, but it never occurred to him that limiting his testing to boys was, indeed, a limit. That is not a reflection of Piaget; it is a reflection of the Scientific Model that you worship and whose assumptions, I am arguing, must be questioned. </pre> <pre wrap=""> Why is this a reflection of the scientific model? The scientific model here is that the truth of any theory is determined by experiment. I don't see how Piaget's assumption that tests done only on boys should apply to girls says anything about the scientific method. If an assumption is in dispute, it can be checked with experiment.</pre> </blockquote> It is a reflection on the scientific model because the assumptions were not questioned by scientists but by a political movement. The assumption was not even articulated as an assumption: "it went without saying that the male is the universal subject" it is codified in our language, we speak of mankind, etc. Joanna <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid20060810004101.86054.qmail@web51305.mail.yahoo.com"> <pre wrap=""> </pre> </blockquote> </body> </html>