Examines the role Gestalt Psychology has played in the years leading up to the cognitive revolution. The text discusses the historical relationships connecting behaviourism, Gestalt Psychology and the development of cognitive psychology, and outlines the principles of Gestalt Psychology.

Examines the role Gestalt Psychology has played in the years leading up to the cognitive revolution. The text discusses the historical relationships connecting behaviourism, Gestalt Psychology and the development of cognitive psychology, and outlines the principles of Gestalt Psychology.

The evolution of cognitive psychology, traced from the beginnings of a rigorous experimental psychology at the end of the nineteenth century to the "cognitive revolution" at the end of the twentieth, and the social and cultural contexts of its theoretical developments. Modern psychology began with the adoption of experimental methods at the end of the nineteenth century: Wilhelm Wundt established the first formal laboratory in 1879; universities created independent chairs in psychology shortly thereafter; and William James published the landmark work Principles of Psychology in 1890. In A History of Modern Experimental Psychology, George Mandler traces the evolution of modern experimental and theoretical psychology from these beginnings to the "cognitive revolution" of the late twentieth century. Throughout, he emphasizes the social and cultural context, showing how different theoretical developments reflect the characteristics and values of the society in which they occurred. Thus, Gestalt psychology can be seen to mirror the changes in visual and intellectual culture at the turn of the century, behaviorism to embody the parochial and puritanical concerns of early twentieth-century America, and contemporary cognitive psychology as a product of the postwar revolution in information and communication. After discussing the meaning and history of the concept of mind, Mandler treats the history of the psychology of thought and memory from the late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth, exploring, among other topics, the discovery of the unconscious, the destruction of psychology in Germany in the 1930s, and the relocation of the field's "center of gravity" to the United States. He then examines a more neglected part of the history of psychology—the emergence of a new and robust cognitive psychology under the umbrella of cognitive science.

The ideas of Max Wertheimer (1880-1943), a founder of Gestalt theory, are discussed in almost all general books on the history of psychology and in most introductory textbooks on psychology. This intellectual biography of Wertheimer is the first book-length treatment of a scholar whose ideas are recognized as of central importance to fields as varied as social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, problem solving, art, and visual neuroscience. King and Wertheimer trace the origins of Gestalt thought, demonstrating its continuing importance in fifteen chapters and several supplements to these chapters. They begin by reviewing Wertheimer's ancestry, family, childhood in central Europe, and his formal education. They elaborate on his activities during the period in which he developed the ideas that were later to become central to Gestalt psychology, documenting the formal emergence of this school of thought and tracing its development during World War I. The maturation of the Gestalt school at the University of Berlin during 1922-1929 is discussed in detail. Wertheimer's everyday life in America during his last decade is well documented, based in part on his son's recollections. The early reception of Gestalt theory in the United States is examined, with extensive references to articles in professional journals and periodicals. Wertheimer's relationships and interaction with three prominent psychologists of the time, Edwin Boring, Clark Hull, and Alexander Luria, are discussed based on previously unpublished correspondence. The final chapters discuss Wertheimer's essays on democracy, freedom, ethics, and truth, and detail personal challenges Wertheimer faced during his last years. His major work, published after his death, is Productive Thinking. Its reception is examined, and a concluding chapter considers recent responses to Max Wertheimer and Gestalt theory. This intellectual biography will be of interest to psychologists and readers inte

Originally published in 1981, perceptual organization had been synonymous with Gestalt psychology, and Gestalt psychology had fallen into disrepute. In the heyday of Behaviorism, the few cognitive psychologists of the time pursued Gestalt phenomena. But in 1981, Cognitive Psychology was married to Information Processing. (Some would say that it was a marriage of convenience.) After the wedding, Cognitive Psychology had come to look like a theoretically wrinkled Behaviorism; very few of the mainstream topics of Cognitive Psychology made explicit contact with Gestalt phenomena. In the background, Cognition's first love – Gestalt – was pining to regain favor. The cognitive psychologists' desire for a phenomenological and intellectual interaction with Gestalt psychology did not manifest itself in their publications, but it did surface often enough at the Psychonomic Society meeting in 1976 for them to remark upon it in one of their conversations. This book, then, is the product of the editors’ curiosity about the status of ideas at the time, first proposed by Gestalt psychologists. For two days in November 1977, they held an exhilarating symposium that was attended by some 20 people, not all of whom are represented in this volume. At the end of our symposium it was agreed that they would try, in contributions to this volume, to convey the speculative and metatheoretical ground of their research in addition to the solid data and carefully wrought theories that are the figure of their research.

Originally published in 1987, this title intended to historically reveal, through tracing Gibson’s development, the substance of his views and how they bore upon general philosophical issues in theories of knowledge, and to investigate in detail the historical context of Gibson’s theoretical position within psychology. Though the author has included a history of Gibson’s perceptual research and experimentation, the focus is to explicate the ‘dynamic abstract form’ of Gibson’s ecological approach. His emphasis is philosophical and theoretical, attempting to bring out the direction Gibson was moving in and how such changes could restructure the theoretical fabric of psychology. He devotes considerable attention to the Greeks, Medievalists, and the founders of the Scientific Revolution. This is because Gibson’s theoretical challenge runs deep into the structure of western thought. The authors’ central goal was to set Gibson’s ecological theory within the historical context of fundamental philosophical-scientific issues.

Cognitive science has been dominated by a model of mental phenomena based on software--or the rules for input, output, organization, and functioning employed by a computer--which is now showing signs of losing its preeminence. In this book 28 leading scholars from diverse fields carefully consider what that think will be the future course for this intellectual movement.

XVI Psychologists have, however, shown that what we are primarily aware of is not a succession of sense-data but figures-ground phenomena: Wittgenstein's ambiguous duck-rabbit is merely one such example. They have also drawn our attention to the existence of tertiary qualities in perception, such as 'symmetry' and 'elegance' which are just as directly given as are the perceived colours red, green or yellow. It is interesting to note that Merleau-Ponty has made considerable use of Gestalt ideas in his Phenomenology of Perception. One of the commonest reasons given by linguistic philosophers for not making direct use of the results of psychological research (although philosophers are usually willing to accept the first-hand results of physical science) is that philosophical accounts of perception and thinking are concerned with analysing the language in which these reports are made; that is to say, they are second-order enquiries. Often this approach is still more restricted and ordinary linguistic usage is taken as the yardstick against which questions relating to thought and perception are to be measured. The task of the philosopher is then con fined to the analysis of ordinary language. If he is more adventurous, as some writers on philosophical psychology are, he might go on to show how far the language used by psychological researchers falls short of the paradigms of common sense.

This collection of essays demonstrates the usefulness of looking at cinema with the analytical methods provided by art theory. "The Visual Turn" is a dialogue between art historians and film theorists from the silent period to the aftermath of World War II.