International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

Any configuration perceived as a whole, with global properties that cannot be assigned to any specific part.

Gestalt is a German word meaning form, figure or shape, all properties of wholes. As such it is one of the main roots of systemic concepts and models and of so-called holism.

G. PASK offers the following definition: "Some property – such as roundness – common to a set of sense data and appreciated by organisms or artifacts" (1961, p.115). This definition emphasizes the perceptual significance but does not elaborate on the proper characteristics of Gestalt.

R.W. FULLER and P. PUTNAM complete somewhat the concept in the following way: "The concept of Gestalt has at its core the compounding of a set of elementary motor possibilities focussed to a choice of specific act" (1967, p.105). It results of the stabilization of the relative dominance of some perception cohered through an at least provisionally completed random search process.

D. KATZ, quoted by A. LOPEZ GARCIA and M PRUÑONOSA, summarized a set of laws of form (not to be confused with G. SPENCER BROWN's Laws of Form), as follows:

a. "Closure law: lines which close a space and which are therefore correlative, tend to be put together…

b. "Equality law: if several active elements are present, then there is a tendency to put together those pertaining to the same class.

c. "Proximity law: the union of parts which constitute a whole tends toward a minimal interval of time or place. Factors b) and c) are correlative as pointed out by KOFFKA (1935, p.164): "… two parts in the field will attract each other according to their degree of proximity and equality".

d. "Good shape law: those parts of a figure which share the direction or the movement of the whole are put together" (1993, p.1197).

These authors translate these four laws to linguistics as:

a. an additive relationship

b. an equivalence relationship

c. a consecutive relationship

d. an inclusive relationship… between language elements.

E. ANDREEWSKY enumerates some "of the most powerful systemic concepts" which originated in Gestalt concepts:

"Whole and parts: A great deal of experiments involved with the factors of perception, have put forward the very general idea that the characteristics of the whole determine those of its parts. These parts lose their individuality in the whole unless their own properties destroy the unity of this whole.

"Figure-background: Figures are always connected to their context, that is the background… This is reflected by a number of pattern recognition phenomena, namely optical illusions" (1993, p.186).

More generally, we could speak of perceptive illusions or ambiguities (touch, hearing and other sensorial ones).

ANDREEWSKY pursues:

"Permanence of forms properties: certain aspects of perception demonstrate quite clearly the relative independence of pattern recognition from the conditions of stimulation" (p.186).

She concludes: "It is thus possible to see in Gestalt Psychology the origin to some key Systems Science concepts, such as the relation between a system and its elements, or the status of cognition in the observer-observed relationship" (Ibid).