Name: Gestalt Psychology in German Culture, 1890-1967 By Mitchell G. Ash (University of Iowa and Universitat Wien, Austria)
SKU: 9780521646277
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Gestalt Psychology in German Culture, 1890-1967 Summary

Gestalt Psychology in German Culture, 1890-1967: Holism and the Quest for Objectivity by Mitchell G. Ash (University of Iowa and Universitat Wien, Austria)

This is a full-length historical study of Gestalt psychology - an attempt to advance holistic thought within natural science. Holistic thought is often portrayed as a woolly-minded revolt against reason and modern science, but this is not so. On the basis of rigorous experimental research and scientific argument as well as on philosophical grounds, the Gestalt theorists Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka opposed conceptions of science and mind that equated knowledge of nature with its effective manipulation and control. Instead, they attempted to establish dynamic principles of inherent, objective order and meaning, in current language, and principles of self-organization, in human perception and thinking, in human and animal behavior, and in the physical world. The impact of their work ranged from cognitive science to theoretical biology and film theory. Based on exhaustive research in primary sources including archival material, this study illuminates the multiple social and intellectual contexts of Gestalt theory and analyses the emergence, development and reception of its conceptual foundations and research programmes from 1890 to 1967.

Gestalt Psychology in German Culture, 1890-1967 Reviews

Mitchell Ash has written a book...that exemplifies the best current work in the social history of ideas. Geoffrey Cocks, Central European History
Ash's book offers an ingenious web of various intertwined life histories....the book is a masterpiece....The book's expansiveness commands unadulterated admiration....His style undeniably displays an aesthetic view on research and writing....Ash writes in a clear, seeming effortless prose. His polished details include German words added between brackets. The well-chosen illustrations offer extra information and meticulously taken care of are the appendixes, notes and index. Trudy Dehue, Contemporary Psychology
...a book that not only is the most comprehensive and authoritative narrative history of Gestalt psychology we are apt to see, but also a study concerened with recentering a number of our assumptions about what this research effort was all about-an effect achieved by situating it systematically in its various shaping, facilitating and constraining contexts: philosophical/intellectual....The work is particularly impressive for the author's dedication to integrating attention to the actual stuff of Gestalt psychology itself-the studies, what they were asking, how they were carried out-into a theoretically-sensitive, thickening and evolving narrative over more than a half-century of disciplinary formation, elaboration, and finally partially disintegration. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Science

List of illustrations; Preface; Introduction; Part I. The Social and Intellectual Settings: 1. The academic environment and the establishment of experimental psychology; 2. Carl Stumpf and the training of scientists in Berlin; 3. The philosophers' protest; 4. Making a science of mind: styles of reasoning in sensory physiology and experimental psychology; 5. Challenging positivism: revised philosophies of mind and science; 6. The Gestalt debate: from Goethe to Ehrenfels and beyond; Part II. The Emergence of Gestalt Theory, 1910-1920: 7. Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Koehler; 8. Laying the conceptual and research foundations; 9. Reconstructing perception and behaviour; 10. Insights and confirmations in animals: Koehler on Tenerife; 11. The step to natural philosophy: Die Physischen Gestalten; 12. Wertheimer in times of war and revolution: science for the military and toward a new logic; Part III. The Berlin School in Weimar Germany: 13. Establishing the Berlin School; 14. Research styles and results; 15. Theory's growth and limits: development, open systems, self and society; 16. Variations in theory and practice: Kurt Lewin, Adhemar Gelb and Kurt Goldstein; 17. The encounter with Weimar culture; 18. The reception among German-speaking psychologists; Part IV. Under Nazism and After: Survival and Adaptation: 19. Persecution, emigration and Koehler's resistance in Berlin; 20. Two students adapt: Wolfgang Metzger and Kurt Gottschaldt; 21. Research, theory and system: continuity and change; 22. The post-war years; Appendices; List of unpublished sources; Notes; Index.

Additional information

Sku

NLS9780521646277

ISBN 13

9780521646277

ISBN 10

0521646278

Title

Gestalt Psychology in German Culture, 1890-1967: Holism and the Quest for Objectivity by Mitchell G. Ash (University of Iowa and Universitat Wien, Austria)

Author

Mitchell G. Ash (University of Iowa and Universitat Wien, Austria)

Series

Cambridge Studies in the History of Psychology

Condition

New

Binding type

Paperback

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Year published

1998-10-13

Number of pages

528

Prizes

N/A

Cover note

Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.

Note

This is a new book - be the first to read this copy. With untouched pages and a perfect binding, your brand new copy is ready to be opened for the first time

Gestalt Psychology in German Culture, 1890-1967 Mitchell G. Ash (University of Iowa and Universitat Wien, Austria)

Gestalt Psychology in German Culture, 1890-1967 by Mitchell G. Ash (University of Iowa and Universitat Wien, Austria)

Summary

Gestalt Psychology in German Culture, 1890-1967 Summary

Gestalt Psychology in German Culture, 1890-1967: Holism and the Quest for Objectivity by Mitchell G. Ash (University of Iowa and Universitat Wien, Austria)

Gestalt Psychology in German Culture, 1890-1967 Reviews

Table of Contents

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