Éric Trémault: Structure and sensation, Vrin, Paris, 2020, 196 pp

Abstract

Eric Structure critique forme Structure and Sensation, an examination of Gestalt Psychology ] focuses on Köhler’s (1887–1967) and Koffka’s (1886–1941) explanations of the perception of sensory qualities, in particular colours. At the beginning of the 20th century, many scholars explained the perception of figures through the association of their elementary qualities. They argued that when we regularly perceive qualities together, we will associate them into the perception of a figure. For example, when we repeatedly perceive cold and white together, we will perceive a snowball. In this theory, the qualities are perceived independently from one another, remain constant throughout the processing inside the human body and then are bound together by an act of the mind. The Berlin Gestalt School opposes this view and reasons that first the sensory qualities are united into a whole and that this whole, in its turn, influences how we perceive its parts or the individual qualities. The perception of an individual quality, then, may not be the same when based on a different whole, although each time an identical sensory stimu-lus reaches the organism. Trémault mentions several experiments of the Berlin Gestalt School that refute the hypothesis of the constancy of colour perception. the the