Prelude
a b c d e f g
Contents
i ii iii iv
Dieu et mon droit
1 2 3 4 5 6
1 Tat Tvam Asi
7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
2 Mechanics of Evolution
9 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 50 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 60 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 70 1 2
3 Environment
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 80 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 90 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 100 1 2
4 Physiology of the Individual
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 110 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 130 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 140
5 Fabric of Society
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 150 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 160 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 170 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 180 1 2 3 4 5 6
6 The Shrine of Content
7 8 9 190 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 200 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 210 1 2 3 4 5 6
7 In His Own Image
7 8 9 220 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 230 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 240 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
8 In Search of Enlightenment
9 250 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 260 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 270 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 280 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 290 1 2
9 Mutation
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 300 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 310 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 320 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 330 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 340
10 Power of Prayer
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 350 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 360 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 370 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 380
11 Revelation
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 390 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 400 1 2 3 4
Bibliograpy
5 6 7 8 9 410 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 420
Index
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 430 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 440 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 450 1 2 3 4 5 6

Jean Piaget, who died in 1980 at the age of 84 was an eminent developmental psychologist and was noted, among other achievements, for developing a theory of cognitive development that offers rather profound insight into the progression of the human mind from infancy into adulthood. His far-reaching epiphany was that at different ages, the mind of a developing person is driven by different requirements and consequently the cognitive process actually changes over time. This observation might well suggest that the needs hierarchy that Maslow suggested for adult humans might have a different structure and perhaps even different elements if viewed in some age related manner. That goes well beyond our current considerations. Rather, we want to examine the developmental processes observed by Piaget in terms of the human mind being prepared for its fully capable functionality that we associate with the adult person. Our observation is that this set of processes is akin to the activity of provisioning a computer system such that it is fully capable of engaging in one or more application-level processes. What Piaget discovered, and what offers an interesting parallel to preparation of software systems for computer platforms, is that there is a well-defined process engaged in the preparation of the fully functional mind.

In conducting psychological interviews with children, Piaget noted that their responses tended to differ from those of adults, but they differed in consistent ways. Thus, children at equivalent development levels tended to think alike, albeit differently from the way that adults think. It was not that children had a different, more limited set of knowledge at their disposal compared to adults; that would be expected. It was that children appeared to reason about the questions that they were asked in a manner consistently different from the way adults reasoned about those same questions. He ultimately identified four distinct stages of human cognitive development: (a) sensori-motor, (b) symbolic, (c) concrete and (d) formal.

Our discussion in this and the following sections relates to The Psychology of the Child by Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder. While we will stay quite close to this work as we pursue our subject, we are aware that our description should be updated and nuanced with reference to subsequent studies. However, while this would provide a more modern version of the subject, it would not alter the fundamental premise that provisioning of the human mind occurs, and the subsequent observation that similar operations are found in computer networks. Therefore, we will be content with this simplified version of the science in the domain.

It is particularly pertinent for us to recognize the two mechanisms that Piaget identifies in describing actual learning during the development stages: assimilation and accommodation. We will consider the telltale phrase “... the equilibrium between assimilation of things to the subject’s action and accommodation of subjective schemes to modifications of things” (our translation) on page 152 of Piaget’s La psychologie de l’intelligence. Assimilation is the immediate process of using the environment in a manner that allows it to be incorporated into existing cognitive constructs within the mind. This process seems akin to the mimetic learning discussed by Donald. Accommodation is the contrasting approach of modifying existing cognitive constructs to fit with the observed environment. This seems akin to Donald’s mythic process. The point to these observations is simply that there appears to be corollary activities between the physiological processes supported by the brain and the resulting social activities undertaken by the individual person in bringing the resulting mind up to an operational timber. In this, the cognitive development process appears a close parallel to the provisioning activities of computer software, where the subsequent layers of software correspond to different network protocol levels of interaction.

Provisioning the Mind