Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 176
Contexte: Even these humble objects reveal that our reality is not a mere collocation of elemental facts, but consists of units in which no part exists by itself, where each part points beyond itself and implies a larger whole. Facts and significance cease to be two concepts belonging to different realms, since a fact is always a fact in an intrinsically coherent whole. We could solve no problem of organization by solving it for each point separately, one after the other; the solution had to come for the whole. Thus we see how the problem of significance is closely bound up with the problem of the relation between the whole and its parts. It has been said: The whole is more than the sum of its parts. It is more correct to say that the whole is something else than the sum of its parts, because summing is a meaningless procedure, whereas the whole-part relationship is meaningful.
Kurt Koffka: Citations en anglais
“Psychology is a very unsatisfactory science.”
Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 22. ( Chapter 1 https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/koffka.htm, online at marxists.org)
Contexte: Psychology is a very unsatisfactory science. Comparing the vast body of systematised and recognised facts in physics with those in psychology one will doubt the advisability of teaching the latter to anybody who does not intend to become a professional psychologist, one might even doubt the advisability of training professional psychologists. But when one considers the potential contribution which psychology can make to our understanding of the universe, one's attitude may be changed. Science becomes easily divorced from life. The mathematician needs an escape from the thin air of his abstractions, beautiful as they are; the physicist wants to revel in sounds that are soft, mellow, and melodious, that seem to reveal mysteries which are hidden under the curtain of waves and atoms and mathematical equations; and even the biologist likes to enjoy the antics of his dog on Sundays unhampered by his weekday conviction that in reality they - are but chains of machine-like reflexes
Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 21-22
Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 260
Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 522
Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 7
Kurt Koffka (1931), self-cited in: Kurt Koffka. Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 22
Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 209
Kurt Koffka. Growth of the Mind. An Introduction to Child Psychology. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1924. p. 388 (2013 edition)
Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 98
Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 208-9
Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 520-521
