Flavell, J. H. (1963). The Nature of the System. In J. H. Flavell, The university series in psychology. The developmental psychology of Jean Piaget (pp. 15-40). Princeton, NJ, US: D Van Nostrand.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/11449-001
A number of facts about Piaget's work lie not so much in the system as about and around it. Information of this kind, of which only a part can be termed metatheory in the strict sense, is primarily orientative: it helps to place the system in the context of other systems, both similar and different. This chapter offers such peripheral and perspective-giving information. First and most basic will be a discussion of Piaget's scientific aims: precisely what he has attempted to study and what he has not attempted to study. A description of Piaget's methodology--or methodologies--follows this. Since some of his experimental methods have come under critical attack, it will be especially important to describe these with some care. The third and final section is more difficult to define. It will include what might be called a "personality profile" of Piaget's theoretical writings--a description of idiosyncrasies of the system, of characteristics of the work and its written presentation which make it uniquely a Piaget production. In discussing these things--scientific aims, methodologies, and idiosyncrasies of the system--a lot of important theoretical and experimental content will be sketched much too briefly and superficially for complete understanding; most of this content will, however, be taken up again in detail in subsequent chapters. This chapter means to convey a preliminary and global image of the system, rather than a detailed mapping. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)