languages_spoken_or_written karl duncker
Swarthmore College ( locally , or ), is a highly selective , leading private liberal arts college located in Swarthmore , Pennsylvania , southwest of Philadelphia . Gestalt psychology or gestaltism (" shape , form ") is a philosophy of mind of the Berlin School of experimental psychology . Gestalt psychology is an attempt to understand the laws behind the ability to acquire and maintain meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world . The central principle of gestalt psychology is that the mind forms a global whole with self - organizing tendencies . The assumed physiological mechanisms on which Gestalt theory rests are poorly defined and support for their existence is lacking . The Gestalt theory of perception has been criticized as being descriptive of the end products of perception without providing much insight into the processes that lead to perception . In the introduction of a recent special issue of the journal Vision Research on Gestalt perception , the authors concluded that " even though they study the same phenomena as earlier Gestaltists , there is little theoretical coherence . What happened to the Gestalt school that always aspired to provide a unified vision of psychology ? Perhaps there is , in fact , little that holds the classic phenomena of Gestalt psychology together ." Pennsylvania ( Pennsylvania ___MASK72___ : " Pennsylvaani "), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania , is a state located in the northeastern and Mid - Atlantic regions of the United States . The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle . The commonwealth borders Delaware to the southeast , Maryland to the south , West Virginia to the southwest , Ohio to the west , Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest , New York to the north , and New Jersey to the east . Perception ( from the ___MASK38___ " perceptio , percipio ") is the organization , identification , and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment . All perception involves signals in the nervous system , which in turn result from physical or chemical stimulation of the sense organs . For example , vision involves light striking the retina of the eye , smell is mediated by odor molecules , and hearing involves pressure waves . Perception is not the passive receipt of these signals , but is shaped by learning , memory , expectation , and attention . Max Wertheimer ( April 15 , 1880  October 12 , 1943 ) was an Austro - ___MASK94___ - born psychologist who was one of the three founders of Gestalt psychology , along with Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler . He is known for his book , " Productive Thinking ", and for conceiving the phi phenomenon as part of his work in Gestalt psychology . The North ___MASK72___ Plain or Northern Lowland is one of the major geographical regions of Germany . It is the ___MASK72___ part of the North European Plain . The region is bounded by the coasts of the North Sea and Baltic Sea to the north and Germany ' s Central Uplands (" die Mittelgebirge ") to the south . Wolfgang Köhler ( 21 January 1887  11 June 1967 ) was a ___MASK72___ psychologist and phenomenologist who , like Max Wertheimer , and Kurt Koffka , contributed to the creation of Gestalt psychology . The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked federal state of Germany , bordering the federal states of Brandenburg , Saxony Anhalt , Thuringia , and Bavaria , as well as the countries of Poland ( Lower Silesian and Lubusz Voivodeships ) and the ___MASK23___ Republic ( Karlovy Vary , Liberec and Ústí nad Labem Regions ). Its capital is Dresden , and its largest city is Leipzig . Leipzig is the largest city in the federal state of Saxony , Germany . With a population of 570 , 087 inhabitants ( 1 , 001 , 220 residents in the larger urban zone ) it is Germany ' s tenth most populous city . Leipzig is located about southwest of Berlin at the confluence of the White Elster , Pleisse and Parthe rivers at the southern end of the North ___MASK72___ Plain . Kurt Koffka ( March 18 , 1886  November 22 , 1941 ) was a ___MASK72___ psychologist . He was born and educated in Berlin . Along with Max Wertheimer and his close associates Wolfgang Kohler they established Gestalt psychology . Koffka  s interests were wide - ranging , and they included : Perception , hearing impairments in brain - damaged patients , interpretation , learning , and the extension of Gestalt theory to developmental psychology . The White Elster is a long river in central Europe , right tributary of the Saale . Its source is in the westernmost part of the ___MASK23___ Republic , near Aš . After a few kilometres , it flows into eastern Germany . In Germany , it flows through the states of Saxony , Thuringia and Saxony - Anhalt . The White Elster flows through the cities of Plauen , Greiz , Gera , Zeitz , Pegau and Leipzig . It flows into the river Saale in Halle . Karl Duncker ( 2 February 1903 in Leipzig -- 23 February 1940 ) was a Gestalt psychologist . He attended Friedrich - Wilhelms - University from 1923 to 1923 , and spent 1925 -- 1926 at Clark University in Worcester , MA as a visiting professor , where he received a masters in arts degree . Until 1935 he was a student and assistant of the founders of Gestalt psychology in Berlin : Max Wertheimer , Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka . In 1935 , exiled by the Nazis , he got an assistantship in Cambridge with Frederic Charles Bartlett and later emigrated to the USA where he was again an assistant of Wolfgang Köhler ' s at Swarthmore College . He committed suicide in 1940 at 37 years of age . He had been suffering from depression for some time and had received professional treatment . His younger brother Wolfgang Duncker , a communist in exile in Moscow was arrested in 1938 during the Great Purges and died in the Gulag . Their parents were the well - known socialist and later communist propagandists Hermann and Käte Duncker .