162
Chapter Notes
2. Gestalt
1. Contemporary psychology had its beginnings in the early Nineteen Hundreds, when the experimental psychologist Max Wertheimer, with his associates
Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Kohler, rebelled against the traditional empiricist
foundations of psychology and pioneered a new approach to mental phenomena, especially relating to visual perception. They referred to their work as
Gestalt psychology, and their idea of Gestalt is the one described in this chapter. Their interest, however, was in the perceptual organization of vision. We
shall not go into that specialized subject here. We retain the word Gestalt in
its original meaning, which is the living mind’s ability to perceive complex,
many-part, spread-out displays in a single eyeful—a single act of awareness.
2. The article referenced here is to be found in the journal Science, February
21, 2020, page 850.
3. An excellent analysis and criticism of the computational paradigm is contained in the book by the Berkeley philosopher Herbert Dreyfus entitled What
Computers Can’t Do: The Limits of Artificial Intelligence.
4. A number of different laboratories conducted experiments similar to those
of Lionel Standing, and obtained comparable results.
5. The same computers are able to conduct memory searches using a system
known as content-addressable memory (CAM). In this procedure, the computer is made to search for a particular content (for example the sequence
001011001) by going through all the memory locations in a rapid sweep.
Even so, CAM is nothing like human associative memory.
6. The linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky has had a great influence on
the course of cognitive science, especially the study of language. For further
details on his work, an excellent source is the online entry for Chomsky in the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
7. An excellent account of the deaf children of Nicaragua is to be found in
Steven Pinker’s book, The Language Instinct. Also, a brief description of the
topic is given in Scientific American, September 17, 2004, in the article titled
“In Nicaragua a Language is Born”.
8. Michael Polanyi was a Hungarian philosopher and polymath who made
important contributions to economics, physical chemistry and philosophy.
Many of his most influential ideas may be found in his book Personal Knowledge.
9. The Memory Palace is a well-known memory technique used by “memory
wizards”. It is described in the article The Secrets of Sherlock’s Mind Palace By
Sarah Zielinski, in Smithsonian Magazine, February 3, 2014.
10. Chunking is a way of taking individual items of information and relating
them to one another so that together they form a single, coherent Gestalt idea.
Chapter Notes
2. Gestalt
1. Contemporary psychology had its beginnings in the early Nineteen Hundreds, when the experimental psychologist Max Wertheimer, with his associates
Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Kohler, rebelled against the traditional empiricist
foundations of psychology and pioneered a new approach to mental phenomena, especially relating to visual perception. They referred to their work as
Gestalt psychology, and their idea of Gestalt is the one described in this chapter. Their interest, however, was in the perceptual organization of vision. We
shall not go into that specialized subject here. We retain the word Gestalt in
its original meaning, which is the living mind’s ability to perceive complex,
many-part, spread-out displays in a single eyeful—a single act of awareness.
2. The article referenced here is to be found in the journal Science, February
21, 2020, page 850.
3. An excellent analysis and criticism of the computational paradigm is contained in the book by the Berkeley philosopher Herbert Dreyfus entitled What
Computers Can’t Do: The Limits of Artificial Intelligence.
4. A number of different laboratories conducted experiments similar to those
of Lionel Standing, and obtained comparable results.
5. The same computers are able to conduct memory searches using a system
known as content-addressable memory (CAM). In this procedure, the computer is made to search for a particular content (for example the sequence
001011001) by going through all the memory locations in a rapid sweep.
Even so, CAM is nothing like human associative memory.
6. The linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky has had a great influence on
the course of cognitive science, especially the study of language. For further
details on his work, an excellent source is the online entry for Chomsky in the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
7. An excellent account of the deaf children of Nicaragua is to be found in
Steven Pinker’s book, The Language Instinct. Also, a brief description of the
topic is given in Scientific American, September 17, 2004, in the article titled
“In Nicaragua a Language is Born”.
8. Michael Polanyi was a Hungarian philosopher and polymath who made
important contributions to economics, physical chemistry and philosophy.
Many of his most influential ideas may be found in his book Personal Knowledge.
9. The Memory Palace is a well-known memory technique used by “memory
wizards”. It is described in the article The Secrets of Sherlock’s Mind Palace By
Sarah Zielinski, in Smithsonian Magazine, February 3, 2014.
10. Chunking is a way of taking individual items of information and relating
them to one another so that together they form a single, coherent Gestalt idea.