Gestalt Psychology

While reading The Laws of Human Nature, I stumbled upon the word Gestalt. When I looked it up, I realized it was an interesting concept worth understanding and capturing.

Gestalt refers to a concept in psychology that describes the importance of perceiving objects or events as a whole, as opposed to their individual elements or parts. The word "Gestalt" is a German term that roughly translates to "shape" or "form".

According to the Gestalt psychology, our brain has a natural tendency to organize sensory input into a coherent and complete whole. Thus, we tend to group together similar elements in shape, color, or other aspects. We then tend to fill in missing information to create a complete picture.

Examples of Gestalt principles include the law of proximity (elements that are close together are perceived as a group) or the law of similarity (elements that are similar in shape, color, or texture are perceived as a group).