“The basic thesis of gestalt theory might be formulated thus: there are contexts in which what is happening in the whole cannot be deduced from the characteristics of the separate pieces, but conversely; what happens to a part of the whole is, in clear-cut cases, determined by the laws of the inner structure of its whole.”

— Max Wertheimer

Source: Productive thinking, 1945, p. 84

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Max Wertheimer 15

Co-founder of Gestalt psychology 1880–1943

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“It has long seemed obvious — and is, in fact, the characteristic tone of European science — that “science” means breaking up complexes into their component elements. Isolate the elements, discover their laws, then reassemble them, and the problem is solved. All wholes are reduced to pieces and piecewise relations between pieces.
The fundamental “formula” of Gestalt theory might be expressed in this way. There are wholes, the behaviour of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. It is the hope of Gestalt theory to determine the nature of such wholes…
We hear a melody and then, upon hearing it again, memory enables us to recognize it. But what is it that enables us to recognize the melody when it is played in a new key? The sum of the elements is different, yet the melody is the same; indeed, one is often not even aware that a transposition has been made… Is it really true that when I hear a melody I have a sum of individual tones (pieces) which constitute the primary foundation of my experience? Is not perhaps the reverse of this true? What I really have, what I hear of each individual note, what I experience at each place in the melody is apart which is itself determined by the character of the whole,”

Max Wertheimer (1880–1943) Co-founder of Gestalt psychology

As quoted in: George Klir (2013), Facets of Systems Science, p. 25
"Gestalt Theory," 1924

“In most cases, we cannot begin to understand what role a seemingly senseless event may have within the totality of the cosmos but recognizing its inevitability within the vastness of the whole can be the beginning of an inner acceptance of what is and thus a realignment with the wholeness of life.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Ch 10

“When the dialectical method is applied to the study of economic problems, economic phenomena are not viewed separately from each other, by bits and pieces, but in their inner connection as an integrated totality, structured around, and by, a basic predominant mode of production. This totality is analysed in all its aspects and manifestations, as determined by certain given laws of motion, which relate also to its origins and its inevitable disappearance. These laws of motion of the given mode of production are discovered to be nothing but the unfolding of the inner contradictions of that structure, which define its very nature. The given economic structure is seen to be characterized at one and the same time by the unity of these contradictions and by their struggle, both of which determine the constant changes which it undergoes.”

Ernest Mandel (1923–1995) Belgian economist and Marxist philosopher

Introduction to Capital. Introduction to volume 1 (1976)

“In relativity, movement is continuous, causally determinate and well defined, while in quantum mechanics it is discontinuous, not causally determinate and not well defined. Each theory is committed to its own notions of essentially static and fragmentary modes of existence (relativity to that of separate events, connectable by signals, and quantum mechanics to a well-defined quantum state). One thus sees that a new kind of theory is needed which drops these basic commitments and at most recovers some essential features of the older theories as abstract forms derived from a deeper reality in which what prevails in unbroken wholeness.”

David Bohm book Wholeness and the Implicate Order

Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980)

“In all the previous cases of wholes, we have nowhere been able to argue from the parts of the whole. Compared to its parts, the whole constituted by them is something quite different, something creatively new, as we have seen. Creative evolution synthesises from the parts a new entity not only different from them, but quite transcending them. That is the essence of a whole. It is always transcendent to its parts, and its character cannot be inferred from the characters of its parts.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

Source: Holism and Evolution (1926), p. 342

“To apply the category of cause and effect means to find out which parts of nature stand in this relation. Similarly, to apply the gestalt category means to find out which parts of nature belong as parts to functional wholes, to discover their position in these wholes, their degree of relative independence, and the articulation of larger wholes into sub-wholes.”

Kurt Koffka (1886–1941) German psychologist

Kurt Koffka (1931), self-cited in: Kurt Koffka. Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 22

“Round about what is, lies a whole mysterious world of might be, — a psychological romance of possibilities and things that do not happen.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Table-Talk (1857)
Context: Round about what is, lies a whole mysterious world of might be, — a psychological romance of possibilities and things that do not happen. By going out a few minutes sooner or later, by stopping to speak with a friend at a corner, by meeting this man or that, or by turning down this street instead of the other, we may let slip some great occasion of good, or avoid some impending evil, by which the whole current of our lives would have been changed. There is no possible solution to the dark enigma but the one word, "Providence".

“The other reason is that what happens to the individual is a cause of well-being in what directs the world--of its well-being, its fulfillment, or its very existence, even. Because the whole is damaged if you cut away anything--anything at all--from its continuity and its coherence. Not only its parts, but its purposes. And that's what you're doing when you complain: hacking and destroying.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Hays translation
V, 7
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book V

“It's a game. What you read is not what's happening. The whole planet is in trouble for the same reason”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

2012
Context: On world economy: "I see the crisis like a theatrical play that concerns the world – not just Greece... But, I am afraid that it is not easy for any country today to decide their own future... Corruption is another way for just a few to benefit... It's a game. What you read is not what's happening. The whole planet is in trouble for the same reason... Generally speaking, yes, greed and capital. In other words, banking".

“There is a fundamental error in separating the parts from the whole, the mistake of atomizing what should not be atomized. Unity and complementarity constitute reality.”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

As quoted in Physics from Wholeness : Dynamical Totality as a Conceptual Foundation for Physical Theories (2005) by Barbara Piechocinska.

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Max Wertheimer 15

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