FONTANA MODERN MASTERS
Series Note: The Fontana Modern Masters was a series published by Fontana Books (the paperback imprint of William Collins) in the 1970s and then by the Fontana Press from the 1980s onwards.
This series was edited by Frank Kermode who described it as follows: "By Modern Masters we mean the men who have changed and are changing the life and thought of our age. Everybody wants to know who they are and what they say, but hitherto it has often been very difficult to find out. This series makes it easy. Each volume is clear, concise and authoritative. Nothing else can offer in such an acceptable form, an assured grasp of these revolutionary figures. The authors are themselves masters, and they have written their books in the belief that general discussion of their subjects will henceforth be more informed and more exciting than ever before."
Source: Double-sided promotional poster featuring Oliver Bevan's 'Cascade' of covers for the first ten Fontana Modern Masters in 1970-71.
http://www.fontanamodernmasters.org/01.html
Alphabetical arrangement by title
Adorno
Artaud
Barthes
Beckett
Camus
Chomsky
Darwin
Derrida
Durkheim
Einstein
Eliot
Engels
Fanon
Foucault
Freud
Gandhi
Gramsci
Guevara
Heidigger
Joyce
Jung
Kafka
Keynes
Klein
Laing
Lawrence
Le Corbusier
Lenin
Levi-Strauss
Lukacs
Mailer
Marcuse
Marx
McLuhan
Nietzsche
Orwell
Pavlov
Piaget
Popper
Pound
Proust
Reich
Russell
Sartre
Saussure
Schoenberg
Trotsky
Weber
Wittgenstein
Yeats
Piaget by Margaret A. Boden
Fontana Press, 1985. 2nd edition. (Fontana Modern Masters).
Synopsis:
Jean Piaget is famous for his work on child psychology. However, recent discoveries in neuroscience and genetics have called many of his ideas into question. 15 years after writing her initial critical introduction to Piaget's work, Professor Boden sets out to evaluate the current standing and significance of Piaget's theories as the reader finds out more about the processes by which a child learns to create a self. The author also wrote The Creative Mind.
From the Back Cover:
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) is world-famous for his work in child psychology. His detailed studies of the development of thinking from infancy to adolescence, on which he based his theory of intelligence as interiorized action and his vision of the mind as a system of self-regulating structures responsive to the subject's interaction with the environment, have not only influenced academic psychologists but have led to radical changes in school curricula and classroom organization. Yet Piaget regarded himself as a biologist and philosopher (a 'genetic epistemologist') first and a developmental psychologist only second.
In this clear critical account of Piaget's work, Margaret Boden discusses the biological and philosophical issues that influenced Piaget's psychology. She relates his theoretical identification of equilibration with cybernetic control to current work on artificial intelligence. And in this revised edition, she discusses recent evidence for epigenesis, new connectionist models of psychological development, dynamic systems theory and A-Life, and assesses the resilience of Piaget's standing as an intellectual force in psychology. While he may well have underestimated the abilities of infants, his depiction of mental development as ordered structural change still reigns unchallenged in the field, and his ideas remain the obligatory grounding for any student seeking to come to terms with the complex field of child psychology.
Reviews:
"A marvelous starting-point, easily the best available, for anyone setting out to understand Piaget."
PETER BRYANT, London Review of Books.
"Much the best introduction to Piaget"
STEVEN ROSE, New Statesman.
"A lucid and succinct account? Clear, balanced and well-informed, an admirable introduction to Piaget and his critics."
NEIL BOLTON, Times Higher Educational Supplement.
"A delight to read: not only an excellent account of Piaget's work, but also it discusses with great insight his achievements, and the criticisms that have been made of them? Worthwhile reading for philosophers and psychologists alike, as well as for the mythological intelligent layman."
HANS EYSENCK, Spectator.
