The main interest of this paper resides in the question about how Norbert Elias faced the doubt of the knowledge that started with the idea that the knowledge do not depends on the subjectivity that builds it up. A totally new theory, as Elias says, demanded the rise of "the subject" producer of the knowledge and all the historical forms of human life, a veil of the inscrutable mystery that was preserved on the philosophical tradition. There was necessary to investigate how and under what conditions empirically questionable, the human beings really acquire the knowledge of the world that serves for their living. This task was assumed, in large-scale, by the psychology of the development formed at the early XX century. So on, the question raised at first in this paper is translated in the question about the relation between cognitive purposes and the strategy of investigation that Elias asks about, with the ontogenetic revolution produced by de psychology of development. The exposition focuses on the period of formation of the idea of development psycho-genetic, axis of the Elias's sociology, that is in history of psychology a period of important advances throughout the problem of human development.
Norbert Elias; Subject; Theory of Knowledge; Psychology of development; Onto-genesis; Human Development