Phenomena of Perception “Why Do Things Appear as They Do?”

Abstract

The experimental and theoretical study of perception and of thought processes, in the last analysis, constitute the core of academic psychology. And, as we have noted earlier, gestalt psychology and genetic psychology (especially the French Phase) both are essentially concerned with the nature of cognitive processes in the larger sense. The history of the recent revolution in the psychology of perception (as well as cognition in general), brought about by the Gestalttheorie, has been already written. It was written at first by the leading gestalt psychologists themselves, notably K. Koffka (167) and W. Köhler (173) in America; and by P. Guillaume (1937) and J. Elmgren (1939) in Europe; and it has been written again by the critical historians of psychology, namely E. G. Boring (39) (40) and F. H. Allport (7). This author will refrain from rewriting this famous history here; but, instead, will examine the structure of the gestalt theory of perception from the comparative standpoint. Far less, however, is known about the genetic theory of perception, and its relationship to the gestalt theory. For genetic psychology is interested primarily in the nature of thought processes, and only secondarily in perception; since it investigates perception, not per se, but in order to throw more light upon the ontogeny of thought processes, from the angle of the partial isomorphism that obtains between the two sets of processes. Our objective in the present chapter, then, will be to examine the phenomena of perception in the light of the gestalt theory and the genetic theory, and to determine the relationship between these theories, which are affiliated beyond the level of mere complementarity and corroboration, and hence the full comprehension of the latter necessitates that of the former. Whatever epistemological significance these psychological theories may possess, beyond sundry overt connections, its analysis will be reserved for the philosophical part of this treatise.