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This article presents an English translation (from the German) of one of gestalt
psychology's most significant documents, first published in 1920 in Wolfgang
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Physical Gestalten at Rest and in a Stationary State). The book it introduces both
embodies Kohler's extension of gestalt theory into new domains and did much to
ensure the broad impact of these ideas and approaches. This introduction itself well
illustrates Kohler's own thought processes both as his ideas emerged and as he
sought to convince his readers of their value. Despite the fact that they are more than
70 years old, Kohler's words have many implications for late 20th century
discussions of the relationships among psychology, physiology, and physics.
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the particular impression of visual figures, the character of musical themes or the
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mind creates patterns of an entirely new kind, which have no parallel in any area of
nature; elsewhere things are so "mechanical"! Others are entirely convinced that
consistent reasoning has built up the system of older thought objects, and that
therefore newer conceptions should conform or be subordinated to the traditional
ones. Since they see no way the properties they assume do exist in gestalten can be
made to conform to proven categories, they cautiously keep away from this
innovation. They believe it might be a misinterpretation of a shaky and empirical
assumption. It may turn out to be a passing fashion.
In fact, even those who are already accustomed to working with the concept of
gestalten as something psychologically real, sometimes feel a slight impediment in
using this procedure, since it means dealing with objects that have little of an
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empirical base and are not yet legitimized by theoretical support. Undoubtedly, it
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does not come naturally to people to treat consciousness and mental behavior
scientifically. Using this approach they do not even feel safe with self-observation.
When one comes across something so foreign, one likes to turn to the sciences
concerned with the outer world and especially with inorganic nature. In those
sciences, the ground has long been more stable, and one wants to seek there a
control or at least an analogical confirmation. Not only does it seem possible, but
one feels the strongest need to explore gestalten, or at least something resembling
them, not just in ephemeral sensations but in the firm shapes of inorganic natural
events. If possible, one hopes to use for gestalt theory the clarity and definitude
that have been attained by mankind so much earlier in observing and thinking
about physical matters than it was in psychology.
A first glance at the natural sciences, however, is discouraging enough. Their
proudest distinction, exactitude, seems to reject right away anybody who searches
in their area for patterns that in some sense can be said to create a context and yet
are characterized as specific units. If furthermore one insists that these units
display properties and effects that go beyond the sum of the parts, that, in other
words, there are objects in natural science that are "wholes," "more than the sum
of their parts," then indeed one will be getting the feeling that one is asking for
something directly contrary to the foundations of the exact sciences.
For awhile, chemistry may raise something like a hope. After all, the
compound KCN [potassium cyanide] looks like a unit of the kind we are looking
for: It has precise properties, which certainly cannot be found in its elements,
potassium, carbon, and nitrogen. Some theorists have thought of chemistry as an
analogy to gestalt psychology, but they have found in it nothing better than a vague
image. Some of the most important properties of psychological gestalten cannot be
shown to exist in chemical compounds. Perhaps, however, with all the miraculous
discoveries in natural science, this additional one could happen, namely that the
apparently new pattern suggested in only a preliminary way by chemistrywhich
is barely a century oldwill reduce itself some day, as physics and chemistry
progress, to a fundamental physical principle. Therefore, if gestalten are now alien
to physics, we cannot be sure how long chemistry will still offer something
somewhat resembling it. In any case, the concept of a chemical compound itself is
still not clear enough, so that the analogy to gestalten could help us to obtain a
sufficiently stable specification of the psychological category.
It would be different, of course, in the realm of physics. Anybody who after
quickly surveying the basic conceptions of physics does not lose his courage,
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could perhaps hope, by systematically scrutinizing its different areas and concepts,
to find something that, at least in some respects, had already been thoroughly
thought about and contained properties of gestalten. But the realm of physics is so
vast and looks so little like gestalten, especially as long as one is without any
helpful pointer, that one soon gets tired. The following consideration also turns one
away from such a systematic scrutiny.
Regardless of whether or not gestalten do in fact exist in physics, physicists so
far have not seen any reason to single out those particular instances from the
wealth of the whole field. Otherwise one would probably have become aware of
this special area, and it would have happened long agoto the benefit of
psychology. We would not have to search for it. As of now, neither the physicists'
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purposes; but experience has shown that it does not get the research very far. It
yields all sorts of vague analogies, such as that between crystals and organisms.
General biology and psychology come closest to each other in the functioning
of the nervous system, especially with regard to the physical foundation of
consciousness. At this point we cannot get around the imperative need to think of
organic behavior as gestalten, because it is expected to correspond directly to the
higher levels of psychological behavior. The consequence and outstanding
significance of this demand was clearly recognized first by Max Wertheimer,5 who
attributed to gestalten a degree of reality not allowed them before to any extent.
More recently Kurt Koffka6 insisted with Wertheimer that the central physical
processes be not viewed as sums of single stimulations but as wholes.
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If, for the reasons mentioned above, the discussion of the problem is directed
specifically to physical gestalten, one might present the gist of the physiological
and the physical question most fruitfully as follows: If physical gestalten exist,
there is a well-founded hope of understanding central physiological processes as
special cases of those physical gestalten. Conversely, every concrete case in which
gestalten are experienced and which therefore, according to Wertheimer's and
Koffka's postulate, are accompanied by physical gestalten, offer specific, definite
suggestions as to which particular kinds of process need to be considered under the
given circumstances. Such a case tells us, therefore, where in physics to look for
gestalten.
This is what we needed. Instead of the general but only vaguely defined task
we have now a much more specific and also more concrete undertaking. Nothing is
lost, if for the time being we limit ourselves to this more specific task.
For one thing, the first step of the theory becomes something like a discovery
of physical gestalten, at least for the corresponding physiological correlates. It
safeguards our category by connecting it with older and more mature thinking; and
it is connected with a step forward in physiology.
Secondly, the most general properties of gestalten differ until now so strangely
from the usual objects of our thinking that one can already foresee: anytime we
become aware of similar examples in physics, we must have hit the principle of the
total solution. Either there exist in physics no examples of gestalten at all, or when
those particular instances have convinced us that they do, we can derive from them
insight into the more general problem. For, since physics as an abundantly rich
system is evident to the eyes of all of us, the question can only be, under what
conditions does it contain gestalten. This will permit us to discover the point of
view from which to recognize gestalten in physics.
If this is correct, one can expect, thirdly, that the special route from examples
of gestalt processes found in the nervous system to physics will eventually lead to
other and broader roads. These will get us back to biology and to a more
comprehensive physical treatment of neural and generally organic gestalt proc-
esses.
Somebody who has laboriously tried to at least start to make this procedure
come into existence knows best that such a program cannot become scientific
reality in one swoop. I hope, however, to have been successful in this book to the
extent that the first difficulties can be considered overcome. Of course, this
increases the number of research questions, which now have been rendered more
concrete. Exactly those phenomena with which we have long been familiar and
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which therefore look all too obvious are the ones that soon reacquire the more
vivid and attractive colors of unknown things.
I was not able to entirely foresee all the consequences. Even after the first steps
have been taken care of, there are others whose implications I more or less
recognize; however, they will be better dealt with when they no longer look just
unfamiliar but instead compelling.
Notes
1. Wolfgang Kohler, Die physischen Gestalten in Ruhe und im stationdren Zustand
(The Physical Gestalten at Rest and in a Stationary State) (Erlangen, Germany: Verlag der
Philosophischen Akademie, 1920). For information on the creation and history of Die
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
physischen Gestalten, and in particular the decision to publish two separate introductions
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
to the book, see Siegfried Jaeger, ed., Briefe Wolfgang Kohlers an Hans Geitel 1907-1920
(Germany: Passau, 1989); and Mitchell G. Ash, Gestalt Psychology in German Culture,
1890-1967: Holism and the Quest for Objectivity (Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press, 1995) p. 168ff.
2. Willis D. Ellis, A Sourcebook of Gestalt Psychology (New York: Harcourt Brace,
1939).
3. Christian von Ehrenfels, "Uber Gestaltqualtitaten," Vierteljahrsschriftfur wissen-
schaftliche Philosophic 14 (1890): 249-292.
4. Vitalism was a biological theory, introduced in the 18th century and still quite in
favor at Kohler's time. It claimed that life derives from a special vital force not explainable
by chemistry or physics.
5. Max Wertheimer, "Ueber Gestalttheorie" ("Gestalt Theory") (Erlangen, Ger-
many: Verlag der Philosophischen Akademie). The English translation by N. Nairn-Allison
was published 1925. In Social Research, 11 (1, February 1944).
6. Kurt Koffka, "Zur Grundlegung der Wahrnehmungspsychologie: Eine Ausein-
andersetzung mit V. Benussi," Zeitschrift fiir Psychologic 73 (1915): 11-90, portions of
which are summarized in Ellis, A Sourcebook of Gestalt Psychology (see note 2). See also
Kurt Koffka, Principles of Gestalt Psychology. (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1935). (All
notes were added by the translator.)
Received April 29, 1997
Revision received September 15, 1997
Accepted September 15, 1997