What is commonly referred to as structuralism，especially in Europe，is of multiple origin.It is both conventional and convenient to date its birth as an identifiable movement in linguistics from the publication of Saussure's Cours de linguistique generate in 1916.Many of the ideas that Saussure brought together in the lectures that he delivered at the University of Geneva between 1907 and 1911（upon which the Cours is based）can be traced back into the nineteenth century and beyond.

One of the most successful attempts at a definition has been made by Jean Piaget.Structure，he argues，can be observed in an arrangement of entities which embodies the following fundamental ideas：

（a）the idea of wholeness

（b）the idea of transformation

（c）the idea of self-regulation

By wholeness is meant the sense of internal coherence.The arrangement of entities will be complete in itself and not something that is simply a composite formed of otherwise independent elements.Its constituent parts will conform to a set of intrinsic laws that determine its nature and theirs.These laws confer on the constituent parts within the structure overall properties larger than those each individually possesses outside it.Thus a structure is quite different from an aggregate：its constituent parts have no genuinely independent existence outside the structure in the same form that they have within it.

The structure is not static.The laws that govern it act so as to make it not only structured，but structuring.Thus，in order to avoid reduction to the level merely of passive form，the structure must be capable of transformational procedures，whereby new material is constantly processed by and through it.So language，a basic human structure，is capable of transforming various fundamental sentences into the widest variety of new utterances while retaining these within its own particular structure.

Finally，the structure is self-regulating in the sense that it makes no appeals beyond itself in order to validate its transformational procedures.The transformations act to maintain and underwrite the intrinsic laws that bring them about，and to‘seal off’the system from reference to other systems.A language，to take the previous example，does not construct its formations of words by reference to the patterns of‘reality’，but on the basis of its own internal and self-sufficient rules.The word‘dog’exists，and functions within the structure of the English language，without reference to any four-legged barking creature's real existence.The word's behavior derives from its inherent structural status as a noun rather than its referent's actual status as an animal.Structures are characteristically‘closed’in this way.

It follows that structuralism is fundamentally a way of thinking about the world which is predominantly concerned with the perception and description of structures.As a developing concern of modern thinkers since Vico，it is the result of a momentous historic shift in the nature of perception that finally crystallized in the early twentieth century，particularly in the field of the physical sciences，but with a momentum that has carried through to most other fields.The‘new’perception involved the realization that despite appearances to the contrary the world does not consist of independently existing objects，whose concrete features can be perceived clearly and individually，and whose nature can be classified accordingly.In fact，every perceiver's method of perceiving can be shown to contain an inherent bias that affects what is perceived to a significant degree.A wholly objective perception of individual entities is therefore not possible：any observer is bound to create something of what he observes.Accordingly，the relationship between observer and observed achieves a kind of primacy.It becomes the only thing that can be observed.It becomes the stuff of reality itself.Moreover the principle involved must invest the whole of reality.In consequence，the true nature of things may be said to lie not in things themselves，but in the relationships that we construct，and then perceive，between them.

This new concept，that the world is made up of relationships rather than things，constitutes the first principle of that way of thinking that can properly be called“structuralist”.At its simplest，it claims that the nature of every element in any given situation has no significance by itself，and in fact is determined by its relationship to all the other elements involved in that situation.In short，the full significance of any entity or experience cannot be perceived unless and until it is integrated into the structure of which it forms a part.

It follows that the ultimate quarry of structuralist thinking will be the permanent structures into which individual human acts，perceptions，and from which they derive their final nature.This will finally involve what Fredric Jameson has described as‘an explicit search for the permanent structures of the mind itself，the organizational categories and forms through which the mind is able to experience the world，or to organize a meaning in what is essentially in itself meaningless’.