Gestalt Psychology (Kohler, 1929)

Claims (14)

• A tiny dot on a blank sheet thoroughly changes the wholeness globally, demonstrating that wholeness is extremely susceptible to small changes.
  Illustrates the holistic sensitivity of wholeness.
• Arch A has more life than Arch B, reflected in the more coherent structure of its wholeness.
  Aesthetic judgment of the two arch drawings, illustrating that life can be objectively assessed through the structure of centers.
• Centers are the fundamental entities of which the world is made.
  Ontological claim that centers, not particles or parts, are the building blocks of all phenomena.
• In portraiture, as in architecture, it is the wholeness which is the real thing that lies beneath the surface and determines everything.
  Generalization from the Matisse example: artistic success depends on capturing wholeness.
• It is the configuration as a whole that produces the local centers and allows them to 'settle out'.
  Core dynamic: local centers are generated by the global structure, not assembled from parts.
• Life comes directly from the wholeness; the degree of life arises from the way centers in the wholeness cohere to form a unity.
  The fundamental thesis of the book: life is an emergent property of the structure of centers.
• The centers which exist in a configuration have a real mathematical existence and are actually occurring features of the space itself.
  Strengthens the claim that centers are not just psychological but physically real.
• The entities which appear in a configuration are not merely cognitive; they have a real mathematical existence.
  Rejects a purely psychological interpretation of centers in favor of an objective existence.
• The real centers we see when we look at a situation in its wholeness control the real behavior of the thing, the life which develops there, and the feelings people have.
  Asserts that functional outcomes are determined by the wholeness structure, not by abstract categories.
• The real character of the world, its flesh, is governed by the centers in the geometry.
  Strong statement that all qualitative aspects of places and situations are produced by the spatial system of centers.
• The wholeness of any portion of the world is the system of larger and smaller centers, their connection and overlap.
  Definitional claim that clarifies how wholeness is constituted.
• Wholeness is a fundamental part of physics, governing the behavior of electrons in the two-slit experiment over and above mechanical forces.
  Extends the scope of wholeness to quantum mechanics, interpreting the two-slit experiment through centers.
• Wholeness is a neutral structure that simply exists; its degree of life or beauty follows from its internal cohesion without reference to opinion.
  Posits that wholeness provides an objective foundation for aesthetics.
• Wholeness is a real structure, an actual 'thing' in itself, not merely a way of focusing on the gestalt.
  Asserts the ontological reality of wholeness as a physical/mathematical structure.