From an informal group of a dozen faculty and graduate students at Temple University, the Jean Piaget Society grew in seven years to 500 members who have interests in the application of genetic epistemology to their own disciplines and professions. At the outset Piaget endorsed the concept of a society which bore his name and presented a major address on equilibration at the society's first symposium in May, 1971. Had he not done so the society would no doubt have remained a small parochial group, like so many others throughout the country, interested in Piaget and his theory. With the encouragement of Genevans and the leadership of its first four presidents, Lois Macomber, Barbara Press­ eisen, Marilyn Appel, and John Mickelson, the society undertook a number of programs to collect and disseminate the results of scholarly work in genetic epistemology. Particular emphasis was placed upon applications of Piaget's theory to developmental psychology, philos­ ophy, and education. One of these programs was the publication of an annual series on the development of knowing, of which this volume is the first. In 1973, the society asked Hans Furth with the assistance of Willis Overton and Jeanette Gallagher to initiate and plan a series of yearbooks with the result that in addition to this volume, a second volume on education was commissioned, and a third one on the decalage issue was planned.

1 Chance and Dialectic in Biological Epistemology: A Critical Analysis of Jacques Monod's Theses.- 1. Discriminative Properties.- 2. A Hereditary Linguistic Nucleus?.- 3. A Cybernetic Perspective.- 4. An Active Choice.- 5. The Role of Chance.- 6. An Ordered Series.- 7. The Role of the Environment.- 8. The Sources of Knowledge.- 9. Logical-Mathematical Experience.- 10. Phenocopies.- 11. The Problems of Innateness.- 12. A Negation of Constructivism.- 13. Monod and Meyerson.- 14. The Dialectic of Nature.- 15. Death Is Not the Inverse of Life.- 16. An Ordered System of the Whole?.- 17. Compensatory Regulations.- References.- 2 The Role of Action in the Development of Thinking.- 1. The Figurative and Operative Aspects of the Cognitive Functions.- 2. Action and the Operations of Thought.- References.- 3 The Development of the Concepts of Chance and Probability in Children.- 1. Introduction.- 2. The Intuition of an Increasing Mixture in a Collection of Discrete Elements.- 3. The Notion of a Random Distribution and of the Experimental Method.- 4. Chance and Miracle in the Game of "Heads or Tails".- 5. Random Selection of Pairs.- 6. The Quantification of Probabilities.- 7. The Concept of Random Situations in Psychotic Children.- 8. Conclusions.- 4 Review of Piagetian Infancy Research: Object Concept Development.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Introduction to Research on Object Concepts.- 3. Studies of Infants under Six Months of Age.- 4. Studies of Later Infancy.- 5. Other Developments.- 6. Conclusion.- References.- 5 Social Cognition: A Selective Review of Current Research.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Person Perception.- 3. Role Taking, Social Decentering, and Egocentricity.- 4. Empathic Understanding.- 5. Conclusion.- References.- 6 Memory from a Cognitive-Developmental Perspective: ATheoretical and Empirical Review.- 1. Overview.- 2. The Operative Approach to Memory: Theory and Research.- 3. An Empirical and Methodological Review.- 4. Loci of Operative Effects on Memory.- 5. The Operative Approach in the Context of Other Mnemonic Theories.- 6. Conclusions.- References.- 7 Logical Concept Attainment during the Aging Years: Issues in the Neo-Piagetian Research Literature.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Investigations of Piagetian Concept Performances during the Aging Years.- 3. Discussion.- 4. Conclusions.- References.