I’m Flo, shy of peeps, you know
I stand at the window and see a house, trees, sky.
Theoretically I might say there were 327 brightnesses and nuances of color. Do I have 327? No. I have sky, house, and trees. It is impossible to achieve 327 as such. And yet even though such droll calculation were possible and implied, say, for the house 120, the trees 90, the sky 117 — I should at least have this arrangement and division of the total, and not, say, 127 and 100 and 100; or 150 and 177. (…)
Or, I hear a melody (17 tones) with its accompaniment (32 tones). I hear the melody and accompaniment, not simply 49 and certainly not 20 plus 29. (…)
When we are presented with a number of stimuli we do not as a rule experience “a number” of individual things, this one and that and that. Instead larger wholes separated from and related to one another are given in experience; their arrangement and division are concrete and definite.
Do such arrangements and divisions follow definite principles?
{ Max Wertheimer, Laws of Organization in Perceptual Forms, 1923 | Continue reading }
