Introduction: Gestalt as Structure Principles in Science, Art and Language

• Authors: Czerniak Stanisław
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This collection of 12 original contributions examines Gestalt as structure principles in science, art and language. It contains papers by researchers from various disciplines (philosophy, psychology, aesthetics, linguistics, organisa-tional sociology). The papers view Gestalt theory as a holistic orientation in philosophical and scientific thought, according to which the idea of integrated whole (Gestalt) has to override the notion of primary elements (associationism), the primacy of the notion of function has to override the primacy of the notion of substance, and the idea of interdependence has to override the notion of sim-ple causality. Gestalt theory emerged in the context of a crisis in the great philo-sophical systems (idealism and positivism) around the turn of the 20th century, at a moment when experimental psychology had achieved the status of an au-tonomous discipline. Its core concept of Gestalt as a structure principle indicates a clear phenomenal approach which attempts to grasp reality in its phenomenal evidence, rejecting all forced reductionism to additional rules or conceptual preforming schemata. The principle stages of this orientation were marked by works of thinkers of various provenance: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s mor-phology and theory of colours, Franz Brentano’s intentionality theory, Ernst Mach’s empiriocriticism, Christian von Ehrenfels’ supposition of Gestalt quali-ties, the Production Theory of the Graz School around Alexius Meinong, Carl Stumpf’s phenomenology and empirical psychology, the Berlin School that arose after him around Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Koffka, Max Wertheimer, Kurt Lewin. Furthermore, the central ideas of the Gestalt approach were taken up in original ways by other philosophers and thinkers like Ernst Cassirer, Edmund Husserl and Karl Bühler. Even though the rise of Gestalt thought was dramati-cally interrupted by the rise of Hitler in the 1930s, the central ideas of this ap-proach were again embraced after the Second World War and have till this day been developed in various interdisciplinary approaches and applicative fields. The papers in this collection range from more historical studies to those fo-cusing on the influence of Gestalt theory on contemporary thought. The aim of the collection Gestalt as Structure Principles in Science, Art and Language is to reconstruct the legacy of the Gestalt approach in various scientific disciplines and its actuality in the contemporary scientific and philosophical debate. The first two papers have an introductory character. The paper by Silvia Bonacchi addresses the semantic development of the term “Gestalt” in a diachronic per-spective and its terminologisation in scientific contexts (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Friedrich Herbart, Ernst Mach, Christian von Ehrenfels up to the fundamental studies within the Berlin School). In the last part it offers a summary overview of the later approaches after the Second World War. In his study, Hellmuth Metz-Goeckel traces the fields where nowadays the Gestalt approach has proven to be very fruitful (perception, problem solving, motiva-tional psychology, social cognition, logic, irony and jokes, meaning, system theory, language, culture and organisational development). The next essays examine the Gestalt approach from a historical point of view. Danilo Facca’s paper reconstructs Aristotle’s concept of form in the light of contemporary thought. Facca shows how Aristotle’s theory of form provided him with an adequate theoretical tool for all fields of scientific inquiry. In Fiorenza Toccafondi’s paper we can follow the development of Ewald Hering’s theory of colours from Goethe’s chromatic theory, and the resulting inaugura-tion of a type of (non-Husserlian) phenomenology founded on the fertile con-nection of phenomenological description and empirical investigation which would have its moment of maximum growth in the first three decades of the 20th century with Carl Stumpf, Karl Bühler, Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka. Riccardo Martinelli’s paper is dedicated to an analysis of Wolfgang Köhler’s philosophical ideas expressed in his The Place of Value in a World of Facts (1938). In it, Köhler considered the question of whether science was able to cope with human values as well as natural facts. Relying upon phenomenological analyses and on his previous research in the field of natural philosophy, Köhler introduces his doctrine of epistemological dualism, which turns out to be similar to the philosophical ideas of Köhler’s Berlin men-tor Carl Stumpf. The papers of the central part of the collection examine the influence of Gestalt theory on the development of modern thought. The contribution by Serena Cattaruzza is dedicated to Bühler’s last essay The Gestalt Principle (1960). Formulated in the last period of his life, this work gathers together and summarizes the basic ideas of Bühler’s concept of Gestalt theory, which he considered to be the core principle in human and animal life. It highlights some crucial aspects of the difficult relationship between Bühler and the representa-tives of the Berlin School of Gestalt theory. Przemysław Parszutowicz’s essay deals with Ernst Cassirer’s concept of symbolic pregnancy (Prägnanz) devel-oped in the third volume of his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–1929). Parszutowicz shows that this concept has its roots in the Gestalt concept of Prägnanz developed by the Berlin School. Jagna Brudzińska examines Husser-lian phenomenology as an intentional-genetic theory of experience which inves-tigates the concepts of type as well as of typifying apperception to gain insight into the constitution of subjective experience. Brudzińska shows that in this way phenomenology gets closer to Wilhelm Dilthey’s philosophy of life and to the theory of Gestalt, as well as to the psychoanalytical theory of understanding. Stanisław Czerniak analyses the conceptual relations between Gestalt psycholo-gy and classical 20th-century philosophical anthropology (Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner). He considers the role which reference to Wolfgang Köhler’s Gestalt psychology plays in Scheler’s philosophical anthropology and seeks categorial parallels between Plessner’s anthropology of laughter and today’s Gestalt- psychology-based comicality conceptions. Anna Michalska considers the role of the Gestalt concept in Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolu-tions. The last two papers study current fields of application of Gestalt principles. Tiziano Agostini and Alessandra Galmonte analyse perceptual belongingness. The concept of perceptual belongingness, developed within the theoretical framework of Gestalt theory, is well rooted in the 20th-century psychological thought: in the assimilation theory proposed by Cesare Musatti, in the theory of Gaetano Kanizsa, and in the theory of binding by Anne Treisman. In Agostini and Galmonte’s paper this wide theoretical framework is used to explain the effects of context on colour appearance. Brigitte Biehl-Missal’s paper offers an overview of new methods inspired by Gestalt theory in the development of aesthetic approaches to organisation and management.

• Publisher: Instytut Filozofii i Socjologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk; Fundacja Filozofia Na Rzecz Dialogu
• Journal: Dialogue and Universalism
• Year: 2015
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 7-9

Contributors

author

Czerniak Stanisław

• Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, ul. Nowy Świat 72, 00–330 Warszawa, Poland