Social Consciousness and Its History

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Abstract
The idea of collective representations, in wide currency in the 1920s, plays an essential role in the work of both Piaget and Vygotsky, making possible as it did the marriage of psychology and anthropology within a developmental framework. They and the other great thinkers of the 1920s were much concerned to give an account of the evolution from so called 'primitive' thought to scientific thought. It is argued that Levy-Bruhl's conception of collective representation and his then radical hypothesis that cultural forms of thought cannot be universalized were the catalyst for Piaget's and Vygotsky's early theorizing, which recast the idea of a 'primitve mentality' into a psychological, developmental framework treating the primitive (pre-logical) thought of the child. Each thinker pursued in his developmental framework key themes first set forth by Levy- Bruhl. Piaget's continuity hypothesis, however, shows the influence of Durkheim, whereas Vygotsky's discontinuity hypothesis is indebted to Lévy-Bruhl.

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