Gestalt
Defined simply, the word gestalt means any structure or configuration of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable from its parts in summation. It also refers to the pattern or figure assumed by such a gestalt structure or system. Gestalt is the German term for "pattern" or "shape," meaning the configuration of patterned relationships of parts to the whole.
Most people are familiar with the idea, if not with the details, of using gestalt therapy in psychology. Psychology, as the science of human and animal (especially primate) behavior, can be considered a branch of biology. Much of the research of the early Gestalt theorists focused on perception, on how the parts of an object or setting interact with one another and in the process of interacting produce a perceived whole distinct from the sum of its parts. Their work had many implications for perception, learning, and social psychology.
Gestalt concepts have been used, in biology, in many other ways beyond psychological studies of primate behavior, studies that have tried to better understand the behavior of monkeys, apes and humans. In the field of comparative psychology, concepts developed in the study of primates are tested on other species. Gestalt theory has been applied, for example, to the study of how Rufous Hummingbirds learn through spatial association.
The holistic, ordered conception of an ecosystem is one obvious gestalt pattern studied by biologists (though ecologists do not often use the term gestalt). Other studies have sought gestalt patterns through experiments that tested whether or not there is a substantial gestalt component to colony odor among one species of ants, and through explorations of the role of the postpharyngeal gland in another ant species as a gestalt organ for recognition of nestmates. Biologists have also examined animal motility to determine whether it reflects piecemeal assembly or exhibits gestalt patterns.
Biologists doing medical research have studied zinc in rats to find out whether an intake exceeding requirements for the mineral could make up for previously deficient intake; the result was a complex, gestalt-like, biphasic growth response pattern. Medical researchers have used gestalt patterns of craniofacial features of children with de Lange and other syndromes to distinguish mild from severe cases. The word syndrome itself refers to the pattern of symptoms in a disease or to the occurrence together of a number of characteristic symptoms. To help physicians in their fight against allergies, a visual gestalt has been applied to categorize pollen types.
In founding gestalt theory, Max Wertheimer was reacting to the blind atomism that prevailed in the psychology of his time. Today, in research work in psychology and behavioral biology, the study of organized patterns are still providing a complement to standard reductionist approaches.
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