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Thanks for the quote which goes to the heart of a deep point. There is a comparable one - "that creation of novelties which is unique to the mind and to life" - in Piaget's (1972) speech in gaining the Erasmus Prize. Why does Piaget make this claim? My interpretation is that the central part of his account concerns normative capabilities—at different levels and to varying degrees?that are common to us all. Human creativity is the use of these capabilities. Quite what anyone makes of them cannot be scripted fully in advance. This is nicely brought out in a thought-experiment that Vygotsky also considered. "Imagine a society of exact contemporaries whose members are the same age (for example, children aged seven years). This society has neither a traditional culture nor generational legacies from the past, still less older members. What would intellectual development be like in such a society?" [adapted from Piaget, 1995, p. 57; commentary in Smith, 2002] For Vygotsky, the answer is: dreadful. I reckon this is a standard answer that most are likely to give, including most educationalists. For Piaget, the answer is: constrained but interesting: [i] highly constrained due to the lack of transmission [ii] in other respects there is ample room for normative autonomy, i.e. "watch this space" due to the severe reduction in normative pressure I would say that it is this deep point that lies behind Wittgenstein's rule-following paradox, as to which Piaget had a comparable view (Smith, 2009). Piaget, J. (1972). Discours de réception. Praemium Erasmianum. pp.27-32. Amsterdam: Stichting Praemium Erasmianum Piaget, J. (1995). Sociological studies. London: Routledge Smith, L. (2002). Piaget’s model. In U. Goswami (ed) Blackwell handbook of childhood cognitive development. [pp. 515-537]. Oxford: Blackwell. Smith, L. (2009). Wittgenstein's rule-following paradox: how to resolve it with lessons for psychology. New Ideas in Psychology, 27, 228-242.