Wolfgang Köhler: Physics

Wolfgang Köhler was German-American psychologist and phenomenologist. Explore interesting quotes on physics.

Wolfgang Köhler: 24 quotes0 likes

“At the present time it is of course quite customary for physicists to trespass on chemical ground, for mathematicians to do excellent work in physics, and for physicists to develop new mathematical procedures… Trespassing is one of the most successful techniques in science.”

Wolfgang Köhler

Source: Dynamics in Psychology, 1940, p. 116

“If we wish to imitate the physical sciences, we must not imitate them in their contemporary, most developed form; we must imitate them in their historical youth, when their state of development was comparable to our own at the present time. Otherwise we should behave like boys who try to copy the imposing manners of full-grown men without understanding their raison d’être, also without seeing that in development one cannot jump over intermediate and preliminary phases.”

Wolfgang Köhler

Source: Gestalt Psychology. 1930, p. 32

“[Thinking] respond to an objective constellation of millions of stimuli by developing, first of all, an organised field, many and perhaps the most essential properties of which have no physical partner among the single stimuli.”

Wolfgang Köhler

Source: Gestalt Psychology. 1930, p. 137

“Physics is becoming the study of organization. In this way … it will converge with biology and psychology.”

Wolfgang Köhler

Source: Gestalt Psychology. 1930, p. 30