ABSTRACT
I HAVE already indicated th a t Koffka claims to give one simple answer to the question ‘Why do things look as they do?5 without making any distinctions about the conditions under which the question may be asked. Because there are two such conditions in general, one when the expectation is th a t the thing will be seen correctly and it is not, and the other when the expectation is th a t the thing will be seen incorrectly and it is not, and because the types of explanation required in these cases are different, one would expect Gestalt Theory to be an amalgam of two quite different things. Moreover, when the question ‘Why does X look as it does?5 is asked when there is no expectation to the contrary, it is no longer to be considered as a request for a scientific explanation, but something which has more to do with epistemology. This means th a t we must expect another strand, a philosophical one, in Gestalt Theory. I shall try to show th a t this is in fact the case.
