My Question: How Do Forms Convey Content; Are There Visual Categories of Expression?

Abstract

Apart from the inadequate attempts of Bense’s theory of information, gestalt psychologists — and by and large many other sorts of perceptual psychology — have almost exclusively tried to answer Koffka’s famous question: why do we see things as they are and not as they appear on the retina? Gestalt psychologists, like the psychologists and mathematicians working with Lie Transformation Groups, think that in the visual areas of the brain simple geometrical forms are genetically anchored, which symbolize rotation, expansion and parallel displacement. While this is happening on the one hand, on the other hand neurophysiology and cerebral anatomy have made enormous strides in localizing the brain’s seeing, hearing, thinking and remembering processes, by discovering chemical, electrical and anatomical states. My question, in view of all this, is: by what paths and methods do things perceived pass on to us information which goes above and beyond substantiating their existence, appearance and position? To my knowledge, this question has never been the subject of scientific research.