Gestalt Psychologists
Max Wertheimer(1880-1943)
Max studied law for more than two
years, but decided that he preferred philosophy. He left to study in
Berlin, where he took classes from Stumpf, then got his doctoral degree from Külpe and the University of Würzburg in 1904.After receiving his doctorate Wertheimer attended the University of Frankfurt’s Psychological Institute. Wertheimer sparked an interest in perceptual organization on vacation. While traveling on a train he purchased a toy stroboscope, A stroboscope is a spinning drum with slots to look through and pictures on the inside, sort of a primitive movie machine or sophisticated flip book. After this discovery he began working with his first subjects, his two younger assistants, Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka. They would become his lifelong partners. They went on to study lights flashing in rapid succession and this is where Wertheimer discovered apparent motion. Apparent motion is the perception of motion when in actuality there is actually no real movement. Max Wertheimer is seen as one of the founding fathers of modern psychology. In particularly, he established the Gestalt school of psychology which forever changed the way psychologists and the general public understands perception and cognition.
In 1912, Wertheimer published a seminal paper on Experimentelle studien über das Sehen von Bewegung (Experimental Studies in the Perception of Movement), which his students referred to informally as his Punkerbeit or “dot paper” because its illustrations were abstract patterns made of dots. The three psychologists began to collaborate, to publish papers, and, in time, they became world-famous as the originators of Gestalt theory (New World Encyclopedia).
In 1912, Wertheimer published a seminal paper on Experimentelle studien über das Sehen von Bewegung (Experimental Studies in the Perception of Movement), which his students referred to informally as his Punkerbeit or “dot paper” because its illustrations were abstract patterns made of dots. The three psychologists began to collaborate, to publish papers, and, in time, they became world-famous as the originators of Gestalt theory (New World Encyclopedia).