ABSTRACT
Gestalt theory was the first to be guided by assumptions deriving from physical field theory. The founding of Gestalt psychology, early in the second decade of the nineteenth century, amounted to an attack against this argument upon all fronts. Gestalt theory had to go on to explain the supposed discrepancy between the brain process and its initiatory sensory-receptor process. The three principal founders of the Gestalt movement—Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, and Kurt Koffka—traced the lineage of their views to a paper published in 1890, the same year in which James’ Principles appeared, by the Austrian philosopher Christian von Ehrenfels. Ehrenfels’ observations upon perceptual Gestaltqualitaten may seem in retrospect to be a little obvious, perhaps even banal. One of the reasons the Gestalt movement gathered momentum so rapidly was that its major hypothesis proved to be immediately applicable to a great number and variety of perceptual phenomena with which psychologists were familiar.
