ABSTRACT
In the country of its origin (Germany) and in the country of its adoption (America), Gestalt psychology was a reaction against two “–isms” : atomism and anatomism. For Gestalt psychologists to inveigh against atomism and anatomism was to inveigh against the machine theory of the nervous system introduced by Rene Descartes and reinforced by Isaac Newton’s mechanics. Developments in histology in the 19th century boosted the atomism of perceptual theory and provided a way in which associations could be comprehended anatomically. Anatomism is the natural extension of the doctrine of specific nerve energies. In the broad application of the mechanistic view that sought to embrace light, heat, electricity and magnetism, the “unalterable object” qua mechanical unit was a substance. The notion that the order in living things and the universe at large is mechanistic is the notion that order arises from material parts that are: independent and unalterable, specified uniquely by their properties, and superposable in indefinitely many ways.
