BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

GESTALT QUALITIES 1)2)

← Back

"Perceptive structures relating to the object perceived as a whole…and not deductible from the properties of the elements of the object" ( I.V. BLAUBERG, V.N. SADOVSKY & E.G. YUDIN, 1977, p.224).

The authors give as examples the structure of chords in music, the structure of melodies which is preserved intact in transposition, i.e. in changing the key. They add the following comment "…This discovery has a clear methodological significance, since it provided experimental evidence for the fundamental inadequacy of the elementalist approach even to relatively simple psychic functions such as perception" (p.234).

Perceptive Gestalten were discovered in 1890 by Ch.von EHRENFELS and taken as the base for their Gestalt psychology by M. WERTHEIMER (1923), W. KOHLER (1929) and K. KOFFKA (1935).

For a balanced critique of the Gestalt psychology, see BLAUBERG et al. (p.225-6).

The simple lineal cause-effect analysis is also useless to reveal global Gestalten. J. von UEXKÜLL already observed in 1928 that any Gestalt unavoidably is a result of some "Gestalt building" process ("Gestalt-gebend")" (1928, p.183).

He clearly distinguished the spatial from the temporal dimension of the Gestalt, which makes him a forerunner of the most acute structuralists (p.252).

It is of paramount importance to understand Gestalten as results of our perceptive organization, which may be, or not, a truthful reflection of reality. In some cases, reality as perceived is a result of a specific Gestalt shift, as for example with the NECKER cube, that admits two different but mutually exclusive visual perceptions. Gestalten are, in any case, corner stones of the systemic viewpoint on perception by observers.

→ Figure ground

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]

We thank the following partners for making the open access of this volume possible:

© 2020 BCSSS Contact/Imprint