Key thinkers
Discover more about pychology’s ‘Key Thinkers’ throughout history.
Edward C. Tolman (1886–1959)
E. C. Tolman’s was another who was concerned with the anti-mentalism of Watson. While Tolman reported that he was sold on objectivism and behaviorism as a psychological method, he found that he could not escape mentalistic categories.
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James J. Gibson (1904–1979)
Considered one of the most important psychologists in the field of visual perception, Gibson promoted ecological psychology.
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See also, Ecological Theory of Perception: The Key Thinkers Involved in Chapter 1.
Gestalt Laws of Grouping: The Key Thinkers Involved
Wertheimer (1880–1943), Köhler (1887–1967), and Koffka (1886–1941) were the founders of Gestalt psychology and were phenomenologists. A key aspect of Gestalt psychology are the ‘laws of grouping’, the idea that ‘the whole is more than the sum of its parts.’ The properties in a unified whole cannot be explained by adding up the components that constitute the whole. Gestalt psychologists championed the idea of emergentism or emergent properties.