Max Wertheimer
Psychologist · 1880-1943 · Psychology, stage 3: Meet the psychologists
Founded Gestalt psychology on the observation that two flashing lights are seen as one light moving.
Overview
Max Wertheimer founded Gestalt psychology with a 1912 study of apparent motion, in which two lights flashed in quick succession are perceived as a single light moving between them. The observation is small and the argument built on it is not: nothing in the stimulus elements corresponds to the motion, so the perceived whole cannot be a sum of the parts, which was a direct refutation of the structuralist programme. He went on to describe the principles by which the visual system groups elements into objects, including proximity, similarity, good continuation, and closure, and these remain standard in perception research and in interface and graphic design. Wertheimer, who was Jewish, left Germany in 1933 and taught at the New School in New York until his death. His last book, Productive Thinking, published posthumously, applied Gestalt ideas to problem-solving, arguing that genuine understanding involves restructuring a problem rather than applying a memorised procedure.
Where to start reading
Experimental Studies on the Seeing of Motion 1912
The founding study of apparent motion, the demonstration from which the whole Gestalt programme was argued.
Laws of Organization in Perceptual Forms 1923
The statement of the grouping principles, proximity, similarity, closure, and the rest; the English abridgement dates from 1938.
Productive Thinking 1945
Published after his death: problem-solving treated as the restructuring of a situation rather than the retrieval of a learned procedure.
Part of
Sources
- Laws of Organization in Perceptual Forms Classics in the History of Psychology, York University
- Max Wertheimer Wikipedia
- Gestalt psychology Wikipedia
