Starting with the contributions of Rorty and Varela to pragmatism and biology, this essay discusses the compatibility of those approaches to the development model elaborated by Jean Piaget. Criticising reductionism, the pragmatism position proposes a materialist, physicalist, and non-reductive model of the relation of the individual and the world, while the Chilean school of biology suggests that human cognition should be understood as an action guided by perception, the enaction. Both approaches propose models best understood as networks in multiple levels which self organize and reorganize. Their conceptual proximity with Piagetian propositions is also considered.
Development; cognition; pragmatism; enaction