Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967)
Wolfgang Köhler was the spokesman for the Gestalt psychology movement. His books, written with amazing care and accuracy, gave a classic insight into many aspects of this scientific direction. Köhler's study of physics, which he studied with Max Planck, convinced him that this science must be related to psychology and that gestalts (forms or structures) occur in psychology as well as in physics.
Köhler was born in Estonia. When he was five years old, his family moved to northern Germany. He received his education at the universities of Tübingen, Bonn and Berlin, where in 1909 he defended his doctoral dissertation from Karl Stumpf. He then went to the University of Frankfurt, where he arrived shortly before Vsrtheimer arrived with his toy strobe light.
In 1913, at the suggestion of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Koehler undertook a trip to the Canary Islands, located near the northwestern coast of Africa, where he began to study the behavior of chimpanzees on the island of Tenerife. Six months after his arrival in the Canary Islands, the first World War, and, as Koehler reported, he could not return to his homeland, although the rest of the Germans living there succeeded. Based on the interpretation of recent historical data, one of the psychologists suggested that Köhler may have been spying for Germany and that the scientific equipment of his laboratory served only to cover intelligence activities. This claim was based on the fact that Koehler hid a powerful radio transmitter in the attic of his house, which he allegedly used to transmit information about the movement of Allied ships. However, there is no direct evidence to support this version, and besides, it was subsequently refuted by historians and specialists in Gestalt psychology.
But be that as it may, as a spy or as a scientist detained by the war, Koehler lived on the island for seven years, studying the behavior of chimpanzees. There he wrote the now classic book, Intelligenzprufungen an Menschenaffen (Intelligenzprufungen an Menschenaffen), which was published in a second edition in 1924 and was translated into English and French.
In 1920, Köhler returned to Germany and two years later replaced Stumpf as professor of psychology at the University of Berlin, where he worked until 1935. The undoubted reason for this prestigious appointment was the publication of the book "Physical Geschtalts at rest and stationary state" (Die physischen geschtalten in Ruhe und im staHonaren Zusfand, 1920), which attracted the attention of specialists with its high scientific level.
In the mid-twenties, Koehler had serious problems in his personal life. He divorced his wife and married a young Swedish student, after which he was deprived of contact with his four children from his first marriage. As a result of the nervous shocks he experienced, his hands began to tremble, which became especially noticeable in moments of excitement. To assess the mood of their boss, the laboratory staff carefully watched the twitching of his fingers every morning.
In 1925/26 academic year Koehler lectured at Harvard University and Clark University where, in addition to his academic duties, he taught graduate students how to dance the tango. In 1929, he published the book Gestalt Psychology (Cestalt Psychology), which most fully reflected the views of the new direction.
He left Germany in 1933 due to a conflict with the new regime. One day, after he dared to openly criticize the fascist government in his lecture, a gang of Nazis burst into his audience. Later, Koehler wrote a fearless letter to a Berlin newspaper expressing his indignation at the expulsion of Jewish professors from German universities. On the evening of the day the letter was published, Koehler and several friends were waiting for the Gestapo to appear at their home. However, he was not touched and was given the opportunity to go abroad.
After emigrating to the United States, Koehler taught at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, wrote several books, and edited the journal Psychological Research. In 1956, he was awarded the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Contribution to Science Award and shortly thereafter was elected its president.
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Wolfgang Köhler was born on January 21, 1887 in Estonia, in Reval (Tallinn), in the family of a school principal and a housewife. His childhood was spent in Germany. He also began to study in one of the German schools. Koehler received an excellent education at the universities of Tübingen, Bonn and Berlin. In 1909, when Wolfgang was 22 years old, he received a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Berlin and until 1935 headed the Institute of Psychology in Berlin. Start scientific activity Köhler also falls on 1909. Between 1913 and 1920, Wolfgang Köhler from the Prussian Academy of Sciences headed research work to study the behavior of great apes on the island of Tenerife. After completing his observations, Wolfgang wrote the book An Inquiry into the Intelligence of the Great Apes (1917). In 1922, after a series of brilliant experiments on the perception and intelligence of chimpanzees, which brought Wolfgang Köhler international recognition, he was appointed director of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Berlin. At this institute, Koehler continued research based on Gestalt theory and in 1929 published the work Gestalt Psychology, a manifesto for the Gestalt psychology school he created together with Kurt Koffka and. In 1938, Koehler wrote the book The Role of Values in the World of Facts. In 1935, Koehler resigned in protest against Nazi interference in university affairs and emigrated to the United States. In 1955 he became a member of the Institute advanced research at Princeton University, and in 1958 - professor of psychology at Dartmouth College. Koehler died in Enfield, New Hampshire on June 11, 1967.
The main provisions of the theory of Wolfgang Köhler
Koehler's first work on the study of the intelligence of chimpanzees led him to the most significant discovery - the discovery of insight (enlightenment). Based on the fact that intellectual behavior is aimed at solving a problem, Koehler created situations in which the experimental animal had to find workarounds in order to achieve the goal. The operations performed by the monkeys to solve the task were called two-phase, as they consisted of two parts. In the first part, the monkey had to use one tool to get another, which was necessary to solve the problem (for example, using a short stick that was in a cage, get a long one located at some distance from the cage). In the second part, the resulting tool was used to achieve the desired goal, for example, to obtain a banana that was far from the monkey.
The experiment was supposed to help understand how the problem is solved - whether there is a blind search right decision(according to the trial and error method) or the monkey achieves the goal through spontaneous grasping of relationships, understanding. Kohler's experiments proved that the thought process follows the second path, i.e. there is an instant grasp of the situation and the correct solution of the task. Explaining the phenomenon of insight, he argued that at the moment when phenomena enter a different situation, they acquire a new function. The connection of objects in new combinations associated with their new functions leads to the formation of a new gestalt, the awareness of which is the essence of thinking.
Koehler conducted a series of experiments to study the process of thinking in children. He presented the children with a problem situation similar to the one that was put before the monkeys, for example, they were asked to get a typewriter, which was located high on a cabinet. To achieve the goal, the children included a staircase in the gestalt with a wardrobe, if there were no stairs, other objects were used: boxes, a table with a chair.
Koehler believed that mental development is associated with the transition from grasping the general situation to its differentiation and the formation of a new, more adequate gestalt situation. Köhler's experiments proved the instantaneous, and not extended in time, nature of thinking, which is based on insight.
Kohler, 1887-1967) -German-Amer. psychologist, one of the founders of Gestalt psychology. In the 1910s, while working at the anthropoid station of the Prussian Academy of Sciences (on the island of Tenerife), he studied thinking in chimpanzees and concluded that behaviorism understood the thinking of animals as solving problems through blind trial and error (see Trial and error method) and about the presence in great apes (in some cases, and in animals at an earlier phylogenetic stage) of intellectual (productive) behavior. After analyzing the conditions for solving productive tasks by monkeys, he concluded that such a solution should be based on the formation of a "good gestalt" in the animal's visual field (see Insight).
Later, dealing with general psychological issues, he came to the conclusion that there are integral structures (gestalts) not only in consciousness, but also in physiology and the physical world, and therefore, when solving the psychophysiological problem, he shared the concept of anti-localizationism. K.'s ideas about the existence of a fundamental commonality in the structure of integral structures in various spheres of reality played a role in the formation of a systematic approach in psychology. Having emigrated to the United States (1935), K. continued his research "on the problem of the electrophysiological foundations of the formation of gestalt in the mind. He was awarded the "Outstanding Contribution to Science" award by the American Psychological Association (1956), and was president of this association. (E. E. Sokolov.)
Köhler Wolfgang
(1887-1967) - German-American psychologist, one of the leaders of Gestalt psychology. Specialist in the field of general and experimental psychology, psychophysiology and comparative psychology, philosophy of psychology and theoretical psychology. In the United States from 1935 to 1958, Mr.. K. -Professor at Swatmore College. He was elected President of the ARA (1958), an honorary doctor of many universities, a member of the American Academy of Sciences and Arts, the National Academy of Sciences, a member of the American Philosophical Society. He received the ARA Award for Outstanding Scientific Contribution (1957). Educated at the University of Berlin (1909, PhD). He began his professional career with work at a scientific station for the study of anthropoids (1913-1920, Canary Islands), where he experimentally proved the role of insight as a principle of behavior organization in experiments on animals. (The mentality of apes, 1917, 1925). His experiments with an anthropoid named Sultan, who had to connect two poles in order to get a banana, are well known. This experiment formed the basis for K.'s idea of insight in learning, i. unexpected realization of the necessary relationships. Working with animals, K. showed that they are capable of perceiving relationships, responding to the larger or brighter of the two stimuli and rejecting even the stimulus for which they were trained. In Gestalt psychology, this phenomenon was called the law of transposition and was used when behaviorism was criticized for preferring single stimuli and neglecting the molar aspects of stimulus situations. Describing his experiments with animals from the standpoint of Gestalt, K. Special attention drew on the formation of unexpected connections in the rational and thought processes (Aha! - a phenomenon), where learning plays a minimal role and the perceptual nature of problem solving is especially clearly manifested. In his student years, he was greatly influenced by the ideas of Max Planck and always believed that physics would ultimately explain biological processes, and biology, in turn, would provide answers to questions of psychology. Studying acoustic and visual perception and illusions, K. discovered some regularities and on their basis postulated the existence of neural fields of the brain responsible for various perception phenomena (Gestalt Psychology, 1929, 1947). He improved Wertheimer's concept of psychophysical isomorphism, arguing the existence of macroscopic zonal processes, which consisted in the fact that nerve impulses originating at one point in the brain propagate in a distal direction. These psychochemical features of the nervous tissue, according to K., form the organic correlates of such Gestalt concepts as grouping, segregation, accuracy and closure. Grouping describes the perception of objects that are close to each other in the visual field, which are perceived as groups of objects, and not as a number of unrelated objects. Accuracy is another Gestalt principle that states that perception occurs in relation to the form most recognizable under the circumstances. Closing describes the tendency to perceive an incomplete figure as a whole, for example, an open circle as a whole. K. had a great influence on contemporary scientists. He was one of the founders and editors of the journal Psychologische Forschung. In 1920 he headed the psychological laboratory of the Berlin University; in 1921 he received the title of professor at the University of Göttingen; from 1922 to 1935 he headed the Department of Psychology at Berlin University. Putting his life in danger, for several years he resisted the Nazis, who threatened to close his Psychological Institute at the University of Berlin. In 1935, Mr.. K. emigrated to the United States, where he worked for over 30 years. His further writings were published there: The Place of Value in a World of Facts, 1938; The present situation in brain physiology / American Psychologist, 13, 1958; Unsolved problems in the field of figural after-effects / Psychological Record, 15, 1965; The Task of Gestalt Psychology (1969). By the end of his life, he received recognition in his homeland. In 1965, Mr.. K. received the title of Honorary Citizen of Berlin; in 1967 he was elected honorary president of the German Psychological Society. In Russian per. published: Study of the intelligence of anthropoid apes, M., 1930; republished in the Reader in General Psychology. Psychology of thinking, M., Moscow State University, 1981. L.A. Karpenko
(Wolfgang Köhler, 1887-1967) - German and American psychologist, one of the founders of Gestalt psychology. In the 1910s, while working at the anthropoid station of the Prussian Academy of Sciences (on the island of Tenerife), he studied thinking in chimpanzees and concluded that behaviorism understood the thinking of animals as solving problems through blind trial and error (see. Trial and error method) and the presence of intellectual (productive) behavior in great apes (in some cases, and in animals at an earlier phylogenetic stage). After analyzing the conditions for solving productive tasks by monkeys, he concluded that such a solution should be based on the formation of a “good gestalt” in the visual field of the animal (see Fig. insight).
Later, dealing with general psychological issues, he came to the conclusion that there are integral structures (gestalts) not only in consciousness, but also in physiology and the physical world, and therefore, when solving the psychophysiological problem, he shared the concept of anti-localizationism.
K.'s ideas about the existence of a fundamental commonality in the structure of integral structures in various spheres of reality played a role in the formation of a systematic approach in psychology. Having emigrated to the United States (1935), K. continued his research on the problem of the electrophysiological foundations of the formation of gestalts in the mind. He was awarded the "Outstanding Contribution to Science" Amer. Psychological Association (1956), was the president of this association. (E.E. Sokolova)
Psychological dictionary. A.V. Petrovsky M.G. Yaroshevsky
(1887–1967) - German-American psychologist, one of the leaders of Gestalt psychology. Experimentally proved in experiments on animals ("Study of the intellect of great apes", 1917) the role of insight as a principle of behavior organization. According to K., with the successful solution of an intellectual problem, a vision of the situation as a whole occurs and its transformation into a gestalt, due to which the nature of adaptive reactions changes.
Köhler Wolfgang's research expanded the scope of ideas about the nature of skills and new forms of human and animal behavior. K. studied the phenomenon of transposition, which is based on the body's reactions not to separate, disparate stimuli, but to their ratio. He believed that psychological knowledge should be built on the model of physical knowledge, since the processes in the mind and the body as a material system are in one-to-one correspondence (isomorphism). Guided by this idea, he extended the concept of Gestalt to the brain. This prompted the followers of K. to postulate the presence in the brain of electric fields that serve as a correlate of mental gestalts in the perception of external objects.
Literature
- 1913 Uber unbemerkte Empfindungen und Urteilstauschungen (Unnoticed feelings and misjudgments). Zeitschrift fur Psychologie, 66, 51-80.
- 1917 Intelligenzprufung an Menschenaffen. (The mentality of apes, English translation, Harcourt Brace, 1925.)
- 1920 Die physischen Gestalten in Ruhe und im stationären Zustand: eine naturphilosophische Untersuchung
- 1929 Gestalt Psychology. Liveright (rev. edn, 1947).
- 1938 The Place of Value in a World of Facts. liveright.
- 1958 The present situation in brain physiology. American Psychologist, 13,150-154.
- 1965 Unsolved problems in the field of figurative after-effects. Psychological Record, 15, 63-83.
- 1969 The Task of'Gestalt Psychology. Princeton University Press.
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Köhler Wolfgang (01/21/1887 - 06/11/1967) - German psychologist, one of the founders of Gestalt psychology. In the 1910s, he conducted research at an experimental station on about. Tenerife (Canary Islands) on the problem of thinking of great apes, as a result of which he showed that in great apes, and even in less developed animals, thinking is carried out not just by blind trial and error, carried out in practical terms (as was believed in behaviorism), but based on a mental representation of the course of solving the problem.
At the basis of such a decision, he saw the process of formation in the visual field of an animal of an integral structure, or a “good gestalt”. Later, in his theoretical works, Köhler formulated the conclusion about the formation of gestalts not only in consciousness, but also at the level of physiology and physics, which allowed him to join the supporters of the concept of anti-localizationism in solving the psychophysical problem. After emigrating to the USA in 1935, he studied the electrophysiological foundations of the process of gestalt formation.
Köhler is a German psychologist who, together with M. Wertheimer and K. Koffka, laid the foundations of Gestalt psychology. Professor of psychology and philosophy at the Göttingen and Berlin (since 1922) universities, director of the Institute of Psychology in Berlin. Since 1935 in the USA; professor at Swatmore College, Princeton. Köhler's work at the zoological station on the island of Tenerife (1913-40) on the study of the intelligence of great apes was widely known.
Köhler concluded:
1) chimpanzees have intelligent behavior of the same kind as humans; the difference in the behavior of chimpanzees and humans is only in the degree of complexity of the form or structure of behavior;
2) the latter is a certain integral structure of actions (gestalt) that arises in connection with the visual perception of the situation;
3) the nature of this perception is holistic, irreducible to individual elements simultaneous “grasping” of relationships (insight).
Köhler's erasure of the fundamental differences between the intellect of man and anthropoids was criticized in the subsequent development of psychology. For the works of Köhler 1940-60s. characteristic is the desire to establish a structural commonality of physical and mental phenomena. Köhler tried to prove, based on erroneous naturalistic positions, the principle of isomorphism of the physico-physiological structure of the brain and mental processes, in particular, to derive the Gestalt understood laws of the psyche directly from the analysis of the electrical activity of the brain.
Biography of Wolfgang Köhler
Wolfgang Köhler was born on January 21, 1887 in Revel (now Tallinn). His father was a teacher at a private school run by the local German community. The cult of education reigned in the family. Wolfgang's elder brother, Wilhelm, with whom he had a close friendship, devoted himself to science. Four sisters also received a good education - medical and pedagogical.
When Wolfgang Köhler was five years old, the family moved to the Fatherland. He was educated at the universities of Tübingen, Bonn and Berlin.
In those years, the German system of higher education was the standard for the whole world. Student liberties in it were combined with the highest level teaching and strict examination requirements. They say about German students of that time: a third of them could not stand the intense study and ended up with a nervous breakdown, another third fled from academic rigor to endless beer revels and ended up with alcoholism, but another third received a brilliant education and eventually created the destinies of Europe.
Köhler clearly belonged to the last third, although he never really aspired to become a history maker. Science attracted him.
At universities, Köhler received fundamental training in physics, chemistry, and biology. He was deeply impressed by one of the professors of physics at the University of Berlin, the great Max Planck.
From his lectures, the future psychologist learned about the principle of entropy and the dynamic self-regulation of physical systems, such as electrolytic media. Under the influence of Planck, Köhler came to the conclusion that biological phenomena can in principle be explained by physical laws, the understanding of which, in turn, contributes to the solution of psychological problems.
Even after many years, colleagues noted that the manner of thinking inherent in Köhler is more characteristic of a physicist than a psychologist. Kohler's early scientific studies bizarrely intertwined his interests in physics (specifically, acoustics), psychology, and a longstanding passion for music - his first experiments were devoted to the study of auditory perception. For these studies, he received his doctorate in psychology (1909).
