Good Gestalt: Metzger on seeing

Abstract

Gestalt psychology has had a lasting impact on the study of visual perception, as perusal of recent comprehensive textbooks, such as Steven Palmer’s Vision Science (Cambridge, MA, 1999) and Bruce Goldstein’s Sensation and Perception (Belmont, 2010), attests. Until now, the primary English-language overviews of Gestalt psychology in general, and of Gestalt theories of visual perception in particular, were Wolfgang Kohler’s Gestalt Psychology (New York, 1929; 2nd edn., 1947) and Kurt Koffka’s Principles of Gestalt Psychology (New York, 1935). These books were written in English. Although focused on visual perception, they also covered memory, learning and insight, and behavior. They began with methodological discussions and emphasized Gestalt conceptions of field-organized brain processes. By comparison with Kohler’s and Koffka’s books, Metzger’s, which was originally published in German in 1936, is more accessible as an introduction to Gestalt theories of visual perception. It treats methodological issues by briefly surveying the history of visual theory (pp. xv–xxv). In this history, sensory atomism and unconscious inference are the villains, and Christian von Ehrenfels, with his appreciation of Gestalt qualities in perceptual experience, is the hero. This introduction makes points similar to those in Kohler’s and Koffka’s opening chapters, but by setting its criticisms of atomism and unconscious inference into a historical narrative, it eases the reader into a Gestalt frame of mind. The twelve chapters forming the body of the work develop Gestalt laws of perceptual organization and illustrate their application. The first three chapters cover organization and grouping. These and the remaining chapters are generously supplied with figures and photographs to exemplify the phenomena in question. The fourth chapter examines developmental aspects of shape perception. The fifth concerns Gestalt laws and camouflage, paying special attention to boundary