On Perceived Motion and Figural Organization

Max Wertheimer (1880¿1943) was the founder of Gestalt psychology. He taught at the universities of Berlin and Frankfurt and at the New School for Social Research in New York. Lothar Spillmann, was for many years Professor in the Brain Research Unit at the University of Freiburg, is Visiting Professor at the Herder Foundation, Bonn, and the China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan. He edited Wolfgang Metgzer¿s Laws of Seeing (MIT Press, 2005), another classic work from the Gestalt movement.

"This first complete translation of Max Wertheimer's early writings makes his classic work available to a much enlarged readership. The fabulous mind of the author is exhibited in astonishingly painstaking experimentation driven by the logic of relational determination (Gestalt theory). Supplementary essays by six distinguished scientists flesh out the theoretical and historical significance of what provoked a paradigm shift."--Richard Held, emeritus professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT "Reading the classical Wertheimer papers, I am impressed by his originality, energy, range of approach, experimental skill, the wealth of findings, and the quality of theoretical discussions. My hope is that with this translation his works will cease to be just celebrated historical pieces, cited but not read, but become sources of inspiration for contemporary vision researchers."--Dejan Todorovic, University of Belgrade, Serbia "It is difficult to overestimate the importance of these two monographs, for each spawned an entire field of what is now called Vision Science. Any serious student of either perceptual psychology or vision science should read this book, not only to learn about the historical roots of modern vision research but to see how the field got from there to our present-day understanding of why the world looks the way it does."--Stephen E. Palmer, University of California, Berkeley