Gesalt Movement Flashcards
Kant: Simple, novel experience may be reducible to elements but complex human perception is not reducible to its elements without the loss of meaning.
Noumenal world (outside) things in themselves
Phenomenal world (inside) perceptions in our self.Antecedents to the Gestalt Movement
Von Ehrenfels: form qualities. (gestalt qualities)
Antecedents to the Gestalt Movement
Mach: transposition of melodies.
Space, form and time form exist as sensations independent of their elements.
Antecedents to the Gestalt Movement
Brentano: Following Kant‘s lead advocates a process oriented approach based on phenomenological introspection,
Starts the “Act Movement”
Trains Stumpf who trains the gestalt founders (and Freud)
Antecedents to the Gestalt Movement
Kulpe’s Wurzburg school based on impalpable awareness and imageless thought give impetus to the movement.
Phi Phenomenon triggers the formal movement to gestalt.
Antecedents to the Gestalt Movement
Co-founder of the
Gestalt movement
Max Wertheimer
entered the University of Prague at 18 where he studied law for two and a half years.
He shifted to philosophy, attending lectures by von Ehrenfels who introduced him to the concept of “gestalten qualitat” …holistic qualities.
He went on to the University of Berlin to study philosophy and psychology with Stumpf.
Max Wertheimer
He completed his Ph.D. with Külpe in 1904 at Wursburg at the height of the controversy between Wundt and Külpe over imageless thought.
He bummed around Prague, Vienna and Berlin for the next 7 years working as a tutor.
Max Wertheimer
He was leaving for a vacation on a train at Frankfurt au Main when he noticed that two lights on a crossing signal that were flashing back and forth appeared to be a single light that was moving from side to side.
It occurred to him (insight!!) that this apparent motion could not be explained by reduction of the perceptual experience to its sensory elements through introspection.
Max Wertheimer
He left the train, bought a toy stroboscope (invented 80 years earlier by J. Plateau) which was a prototype of a motion picture projector.
He went to share his insight with Koffka and Köhler who were students with him in Stumpf’s lab at Berlin.
Their work with the stroboscope demonstrated that if a brief projected vertical line and 30 degree tilt were separated by more than 200 msec they were perceived as two discrete events.
Max Wertheimer
A separation of 60 msec always produced a perception of one line oscillating from center to the tilt and this apparent movement could not be resisted rationally.
Max Wertheimer
They named this apparent movement the “phi phenomenon” and challenged the structuralists at Wundt’s lab to reduce the movement to its elements.
The structuralists failure to reduce the movement to elements contributed to the demise of their analytic approach and greatly augmented the synthetic, holistic approach of the gestalt movement.
Max Wertheimer
published a book called Experimental Studies of the Perception of Movement that marks the beginning of the gestalt movement.
He stayed on in Frankfurt from 1912-1916 and moved on to Berlin conducting military research on submarine listening devices and harbor fortifications until 1929.
Max Wertheimer
In 1921 he founded the “official” gestalt journal, Psychologische Forcking, with Koffka and Köhler. The journal published 22 volumes before its suspension by Hitler in 1938.
In 1929 he returned to Frankfurt as a professor, leaving in 1933 for the New York School of Social Research after which time he publish little work but exerted influence through personal communications.
Max Wertheimer
Studied philosophy at Edinburgh for one year (1903) and went on to study with Stumpf at Berlin where he received his Ph.D. in 1909 and went on to Frankfurt.
He was a professor at the University of Giessen until 1924 during which time he worked with aphasic and brain damaged patients from WW I and conducted gestalt research.
Kurt Koffka
He wrote an invited article entitled Perception: An introduction to gestalt theory for Psychological Bulletin which started the interest in the gestalt movement in the United States.
His 1921 book The Growth of the Mind on child development was very influential in Germany and the United States.
Kurt Koffka
After visiting professorships at Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin, he took a position at Smith College in 1927 where he remained until his death in 1941.
His final book Principles of Gestalt Psychology (1935) was not as influential as his earlier works.
Kurt Koffka
He studied at Tubengen and Bonn before going on to Berlin where he received his Ph. D. with Stumpf in 1909.
In 1913 the Prussian Academy of Science sent him to the island of Tenerife in the Canary Island chain to study primate behavior.
Six months after his arrival, WW1 broke out and he was “stranded” there for 7 years. A recent book, There are no apes on Tenerife calls into question the real motives for his presence.
Wolfgang Köhler
More Allied shipping was sunk off the coast of Tenerife than any other location in the Atlantic during the war, raising speculation that his research was a cover for spying on the shipping lanes. Nonetheless he conducted much research during this time.
His extensive work on problem solving in apes (shipped to the island) lead him to conclude that primate problem solving (including human) occurred by insight into the problem rather than by trial and error and reward.
Wolfgang Köhler
