1. There is More to Perception than Meets the Eye
Gestalt Psychology Forerunners

2. Forerunners of Gestalt Psychology
Immanuel Kant ( )
Franz Brentano ( )
Ernst Mach ( )
Christian von Ehrenfels ( )
William James ( )
Carl Stumf ( )

3. form or create a whole experience
Immanuel Kant says…
The mind
in the process of perceiving will
form or create a whole experience

4. Perception is An ACTIVE construction of the elements of experience
Not an automatic accumulation of these elements

5. the act of experiencing
Franz Brentano says
Psychology ought to study
the act of experiencing

6. Ernst Mach noticed
We perceive a table as a table, even as its orientation changes
We recognize a melody in a different key

7. Christian von Ehrenfels claimed
The mind, operating on the sensory elements
creates form

8. William James said: Elements are artificial
The mind perceives objects as WHOLE

9. Carl Stumf
And the phenomenologists want to use the whole of immediate experience as the basic data of study.

10. If the mind is active If the mind is active
And our perception organizes and transforms "what is there"
Can we really ever know "what is there"?

11. If we cannot know "what is there"
How do we approximate it?
By "bracketing" (I.e. setting aside) the question of the existence of the object itself (because that cannot be solved)
And using the method of "systematic variations" to get a wide sample of experience

12. More about phenomenologyAt
Note: Edmund Husserl ( ) is the official founder of the phenomenology movement as a philosophical movement.

13. Meanwhile in the natural sciences
Interest in electromagnetic fields and other complex, global phenomena
All part of a "more global" Zeitgeist.

14. THE END