ABSTRACT
Before I begin to discuss the many general theories, prototheories, metatheories, and points of view that have been put forward by students of form perception over a history that spans millenia, there are some general theoretical and conceptual points that must be made. One important caveat, best expressed at the outset of this discussion, is the simple warning that, although it may sometimes appear otherwise, it is unlikely that the two major opposing schools of thought (rationalism and empiricism, to be explicitly defined later) in this field are really exclusive antagonists of each other. There is, in fact, a highly complementary relationship between theories stressing the immediate role of the stimulus in determining percepts and those stressing the mediated role of the organism in determining its perceptions. One would be hard pressed to find a proponent of either point of view of such extreme and radical rigidity as to reject all of the premises of the opposing point of view. Rather it seems that the major difference between the two groups is the emphasis that each places on the salience of certain classes of phenomena.
