Jean Piaget’s Legacy: 5 Contemporary Thinkers Carrying His Torch

I remember reading Piaget’s work as a college student and being struck by how deeply he understood the way children think—not just as developing minds, but as active explorers of their world. His insights didn’t just shape psychology; they changed the way we approach education, philosophy, and even artificial intelligence. But what happens to a legacy like that in the modern era? Who’s continuing his work today?

As it turns out, there are several contemporary thinkers—scientists, educators, and philosophers—who are not only building on Piaget’s ideas but expanding them in ways he might never have imagined. Here are five of them.

##1. Laura Schulz

As a cognitive scientist at MIT, Laura Schulz is often compared to Piaget for her groundbreaking work in early childhood learning. Like Piaget, she sees children not as passive recipients of information but as natural scientists—hypothesizing, experimenting, and revising their understanding of the world from a very young age.

One of her most fascinating studies shows how toddlers use probability to make decisions, suggesting that even the youngest minds are capable of complex reasoning. Her work brings a modern, experimental lens to Piaget’s original framework, proving that the core of his theory—that children are active learners—is still deeply relevant.

##2. Alison Gopnik

If Piaget had a modern-day literary heir, it might be developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik. Her books, like The Philosophical Baby and The Gardener and the Carpenter, echo Piaget’s themes while bringing in insights from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and philosophy.

Gopnik argues that children aren’t just miniature adults—they’re wired differently, with a heightened capacity for imagination and exploration. She expands on Piaget’s stages of cognitive development by showing how children’s play is actually a form of scientific inquiry. Her writing is accessible yet deeply informed by decades of research, making her one of the clearest voices carrying Piaget’s torch into the 21st century.

##3. Andrew Meltzoff

A pioneer in infant learning, Andrew Meltzoff has spent decades showing that babies are far more capable of understanding the world than many once believed. His famous “mirror experiment,” where infants imitated adult facial expressions, challenged the idea that newborns are blank slates—a notion Piaget himself helped evolve.

Meltzoff’s work with social cognition and early learning continues to refine our understanding of how knowledge develops before language even emerges. In many ways, he’s picking up where Piaget left off, using new tools to explore the same fundamental questions: How do we come to know what we know? And how early does that process begin?

##4. Susan Carey

Susan Carey, a psychologist at Harvard, has been instrumental in shaping modern theories of conceptual development—particularly how children come to understand abstract ideas like numbers, living things, and the mind. Her work on “conceptual change” is a direct extension of Piaget’s ideas about how knowledge evolves through stages.

Carey has shown that children don’t just accumulate facts; they undergo deep, sometimes radical shifts in how they understand reality—what she calls “bootstrapping” new concepts into place. Her research has been especially influential in education, helping shape curricula that align with how children naturally learn.

##5. Elizabeth Spelke

Elizabeth Spelke’s work on core knowledge systems in infants has deepened our understanding of the cognitive building blocks that Piaget first explored. She argues that humans are born with foundational cognitive abilities—like object perception and number sense—that form the basis for more complex thinking.

Spelke’s research has helped bridge the gap between nature and nurture in cognitive development, offering a modern framework that honors Piaget’s emphasis on active learning while incorporating new findings in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology.

Want to explore Piaget’s legacy firsthand?

On HoloDream, you can talk to Jean Piaget himself—ask him how he’d respond to today’s research, or what he thinks of modern education. It’s a chance to step into the mind of a thinker who changed how we see childhood forever.