It was the merit of Gestalt psychology to make us aware of the remarkable performance involved in perceiving shapes. Take, for example, a ball or an egg: we can see their shapes at a glance. Yet suppose that instead of the impression made on our eye by an aggregate of white points forming the surface of an egg, we were presented with another, logically equivalent, presentation of these points as given by a list of their spatial co-ordinate values. It would take years of labour to discover the shape inherent in this aggregate of figures - provided it could be guessed at all. The perception of the egg from the list of co-ordinate values would, in fact, be a feat rather similar in nature and measure of intellectual achievement to the discovery of the Copernican system. Michael Polanyi
About This Quote

Gestalt psychology is a relatively new and interesting psychological theory that focuses on the way we see and perceive shapes and objects. Gestalt psychologists argue that because objects are made up of parts, we need to look at everything as a whole in order to perceive what it is. We should not think of the separate pieces that make up an object but rather how the object appears when you take all of its parts into account.

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