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Psychology is a very unsatisfactory science.

— Kurt Koffka

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More quotes by Kurt Koffka

Things look as they do because of the field organization to which the proximal stimulus distribution gives rise. This answer is final and can be so only because it contains the whole problem of organization itself.

In our theory the total field of excitation is divided into two major sub-systems, each containing numerous sub-systems of its own: the Ego and the environment. And the trace field which is created by the excitation field contains the same dichotomous organization.

If an environmental trace is in close connection with the Ego system it will not only be in communication with the particular time structure of that system with which it communicated at the time of its formation; but because of the coherence of the whole temporal Ego system it will be in communication with later strata also.

To apply the category of cause and effect means to find out which parts of nature stand in this relation. Similarly, to apply the gestalt category means to find out which parts of nature belong as parts to functional wholes, to discover their position in these wholes, their degree of relative independence, and the articulation of larger wholes into sub-wholes.

Kurt Koffka (1931)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Kurt Koffka (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.