40
3 Gestalt
memory for pictures is almost limitless, because apparently memory is designed
to store Gestalt wholes, and it is poor with words, sentences and numbers. It
is therefore natural to hoard the huge amounts of learning we accumulate in
Gestalt images. In fact, there are well-known techniques, such as the Memory
Palace, for memorizing lists by re-imagining them as pictures or narratives. 9
When you organize your thoughts and put them into words, you are drawing
from a pristine source of imagery. For example, when you make the statement,
“the seawater is too cold to swim”, there is a structured Gestalt idea in back of your
mind which is verbalized in those words. The thought represented by those
words is a complete mental image: It forms one unbroken unit of meaning,
and must be serialized in words to communicate it.
As another example, consider the following sentence: “This has the potential
to be a fearsome new weapon.” Note how the whole sentence works as a single
unit of meaning: There is no way of subdividing it into smaller items that
assert anything meaningful. It is an indivisible unit of thought. In particular,
the thought itself is not made up of words, but is something prior to words.
That is exactly what we mean by a mental image.
The thought processes of scientists have long been a subject of fascination.
In their self-reports, most scientists say they do their thinking in complex
mental images which are almost pictorial. Albert Einstein explained that the
creative aspect of his work is carried out in vivid mental pictures sometimes
enriched with kinesthetic feelings. In science, conceptual structures can be
very extensive, and must be kept in mind in large Gestalt images held together
simultaneously.
As a teacher, you gain privileged insights into the learning process. Typically,
you lecture in a field that you know thoroughly: In mathematics, you know
many hundreds of theorems, and are able to set down the proof of any one
of them without consulting your notes. This is possible because you have a
coherent Gestalt image of the “germ” of each proof—and it is routine for you
to transform the monolithic image into successive steps. But the inner meaning
of a mathematical proof is in the image, not the long succession of steps. It is
similar from the student’s perspective: The moment when a student successfully
achieves the complete synthesis of the proof and “sees” the Gestalt, that is the
Aha! moment. The learner says, “Now I see it!” The word see is crucial, because
indeed it is as if seen with the eyes of the mind. The Aha! moment is the instant
that a thought crystallizes in mind as a single unified image.
In this connection there is a wonderful story about Mozart, contained in a
famous letter that he sent to a friend. Mozart relates that he had been thinking
for a time about a new symphony he wished to write, but had set it aside. One
morning he was walking through the countryside when suddenly, he says, the
3 Gestalt
memory for pictures is almost limitless, because apparently memory is designed
to store Gestalt wholes, and it is poor with words, sentences and numbers. It
is therefore natural to hoard the huge amounts of learning we accumulate in
Gestalt images. In fact, there are well-known techniques, such as the Memory
Palace, for memorizing lists by re-imagining them as pictures or narratives. 9
When you organize your thoughts and put them into words, you are drawing
from a pristine source of imagery. For example, when you make the statement,
“the seawater is too cold to swim”, there is a structured Gestalt idea in back of your
mind which is verbalized in those words. The thought represented by those
words is a complete mental image: It forms one unbroken unit of meaning,
and must be serialized in words to communicate it.
As another example, consider the following sentence: “This has the potential
to be a fearsome new weapon.” Note how the whole sentence works as a single
unit of meaning: There is no way of subdividing it into smaller items that
assert anything meaningful. It is an indivisible unit of thought. In particular,
the thought itself is not made up of words, but is something prior to words.
That is exactly what we mean by a mental image.
The thought processes of scientists have long been a subject of fascination.
In their self-reports, most scientists say they do their thinking in complex
mental images which are almost pictorial. Albert Einstein explained that the
creative aspect of his work is carried out in vivid mental pictures sometimes
enriched with kinesthetic feelings. In science, conceptual structures can be
very extensive, and must be kept in mind in large Gestalt images held together
simultaneously.
As a teacher, you gain privileged insights into the learning process. Typically,
you lecture in a field that you know thoroughly: In mathematics, you know
many hundreds of theorems, and are able to set down the proof of any one
of them without consulting your notes. This is possible because you have a
coherent Gestalt image of the “germ” of each proof—and it is routine for you
to transform the monolithic image into successive steps. But the inner meaning
of a mathematical proof is in the image, not the long succession of steps. It is
similar from the student’s perspective: The moment when a student successfully
achieves the complete synthesis of the proof and “sees” the Gestalt, that is the
Aha! moment. The learner says, “Now I see it!” The word see is crucial, because
indeed it is as if seen with the eyes of the mind. The Aha! moment is the instant
that a thought crystallizes in mind as a single unified image.
In this connection there is a wonderful story about Mozart, contained in a
famous letter that he sent to a friend. Mozart relates that he had been thinking
for a time about a new symphony he wished to write, but had set it aside. One
morning he was walking through the countryside when suddenly, he says, the