Related Terms • emergent property

Definition: The German word Gestalt literally means "configuration" or "figure" and is used to refer to any general pattern which manifests characteristics different than are inherent in its parts. For example, a musical piece has a Gestalt because the tune and melodies are characteristics which it has, but which none of the individual notes have. Similarly, a sentence has a Gestalt because it has a characteristic of its meaning which none of the individual words or letters have. These characteristics of the whole are called emergent properties or supervenient properties.

The concept of Gestalt is used in a theory when it attempts to treat its subjects as unified wholes because any attempt to simply deal with the parts will mean that vital properties of the whole will go unattended. For example, Gestalt psychology attempts to study human behavior as a whole phenomenon because individual aspects of the mind or consciousness would not be the same thing. The movement which lead to the creation of Gestalt Theory grew out of dissatisfaction with the more traditional atomistic methodology in science.

Beginning in the 1920s (although there were precedents which can be found even earlier), some philosophers and psychologists questioned the common methodological presuppositions which dictated that the study of any phenomenon had to proceed by breaking it down into constituent parts. Anything which could not be broken down could not be studied scientifically - as a result, important aspects of human experience were left to more mystical and religious explanations.

Both atomistic and Gestalt methodology are not, however, really at odds with one another. Both have the goal of describing and explaining the nature and of observed events - but whereas the former begins with the parts, the latter begins with the whole. In the middle, the two can meet. The latter, however, does not assume that these connections are neutral and that a description of the parts will necessarily lead to a description of the whole. In other words, it assumes that the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

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