Science and love, music, art, etc. (The limitations of science)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Thursday, February 19, 2009, 10:48 (5553 days ago) @ dhw

In his last post and in an earlier one in the "Paranormal" thread, DHW has mentioned Gestalt psychology and "Gestalten". Not being familiar with these ideas I tried to find out more about them. The following two pages give some guidance on these terms: - http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/gestalt.html - http://www.g-gej.org/6-2/gestalten.html - It seems that the findings of the original gestalt psychologists are now incorporated into modern psychology, but just as a particular branch of the study of pattern recognition. - As to "gestalten", which is a German word meaning something like "forms", I'm still unclear as to its implications. - The examples DHW gives of people who believe in the genesis stories or in the paranormal it seems to me are of people who have preconceived ideas and accordingly try to deny any evidence to the contrary. - But surely the point about our ability of pattern recognition is that it should be applied to whatever evidence appears and serves as a guide to understanding what it means. Having preconceptions of what the answer must be and forcing the evidence into that mould is contrary to scientific method.

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GPJ