New Gestalt Principles of Perceptual Organization: An Extension from Grouping to Shape and Meaning1

Perceptual organization is a key issue of Vision Science challenging all its main approaches, be they computational, psychophysical, neurophysiological or phenomenological. It concerns the problem of why we perceive a world articulated in objects such as people, cities, houses, cars and trees, and not in differences of luminances, edges and bars, or in Wertheimer’s (1923) words: I stand at the window and see a house, trees, sky. Theoretically I might say there were 327 brightnesses and nuances of color. Do I have “327”? No. I have sky, house, and trees. It is impossible to achieve “327” as such. And yet even though such droll calculation were possible and implied, say, for the house 120, the trees 90, the sky 117 -I should at least have this arrangement and division of the total, and not, say, 127 and 100 and 100; or 150 and 177.