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"Gestalt": form, shape, configuration, structure, wholeness, etc. This German term—for which an equivalent is difficult to find in French or English—was the name given to one of the major schools of 20th century psychology. Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967), an eminent member of Berlin’s Gestalt school, was unquestionably its most brilliant and productive representative. We owe this peerless experimenter, theorist and epistemologist the most definitive version of the Gestaltheorie [“Gestalt Theory,”] which is a general cognitive theory based upon the primacy of perception, and a universal theory of forms, likely to be of practical value in a multitude of scientific fields. A pioneer in research on the intelligence of primates (Intelligenzprüfungen an Menschenaffen, 1921 [TheMentality of Apes, 1925]), Köhler also wrote a work on a theory of physical forms (Die physischen Gestalten inRuhe und im stationären Zustand; Eine naturphilosophische Unters u chung [Physical Gestalten at Restand in a Steady State]1920) which, for the first time, succeeded in establishing a continuity between the phenomenological order of real-life experience and that of the physical and biological sciences. After emigrating to the United States in 1935, he began to conduct research on the dynamics of brain activity, while continuing his investigations into the forms and values of the ordinary perceptive world and those of the scientific world. Two leitmotifs thus recur throughout his work: unity of perception, action and expression, and the intercorrelation between physical structures, forms and the senses. This book, with its abundant quotes and commentary by Merleau-Ponty, shows that Köhler’s work is still astonishingly relevant, particularly in the current context of cognitive sciences and in the increasingly popularneuroscience fields.
