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Reviewed by:
  • Laws of Seeing
  • Amy Ione
Laws of Seeing by Wolfgang Metzger, translated by Lothar Spillmann, Steven Lehar, Mimsey Stromeyer and Michael Wertheimer. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, U.S.A., 2006. 194 pp. illus. Trade. ISBN: 0-262-13467-5.

Originally published as Gesetze des Sehens (in 1936) and recently translated from German into English, Wolfgang Metzger’s (1899–1979) Laws of Seeing is a necessary addition to the library of anyone drawn to Gestalt Psychology. As a whole, the book demonstrates the degree to which perceptual phenomena influence studies of sensory physiology and our understanding of why we see the way we do. In this case, the analysis of ambiguous figures, hidden forms, camouflage, shadows and depth, and three-dimensional representations in paintings is so skillfully rendered that reading through the slim volume is fun in a way that belies its rigor and depth. This rigor is not the rigor of mathematics or psychophysics. Rather, Metzger is an experimenter who pays scrupulous attention to the details of his observations. Indeed, one of the fascinating aspects of Laws of Seeing is that the studies are not quantification but, instead, depend on pure perceptual research that is shared with us through drawings, photographs and pictures. His examples let us “see” what he means when he speaks of dissolving typical ideas about scientific versus subjective points of view. This idea of blurring our sense of the observer in relation to the observed is clearly important to his thesis.

From this leading figure in Germany’s Gestalt movement of the 20th century, Metzger’s Laws of Seeing places the visual in the context of human experience. Using simple and testable demonstrations, the studies encourage the reader to grapple with the arguments using his or her own eyes. It is an interactive format, and the playful quality used to present the research aids Metzger in conveying his thesis that we do not decide what we see, and that the law of greatest order, or good Gestalt (prägnanz) means that stimuli will be perceived in a manner that is most regular, orderly, symmetrical and simple. While most of the examples suggest that the organization of the visual array occurs essentially without our involvement, Chapter 11, where Metzger looks at motion, is an exception. Here he presents several examples of the influence of experience on vision. [This translation notes that the second edition included a chapter on motion perception that was absent from the first edition, which is the one the MIT Press published in this translation. That chapter, translated by Ulric Neisser, is available on-line at < http://people.brandeis.edu/~sekuler/metzgerChapter/ >].

One of the hardest aspects of the book for me to get a handle on was Metzger’s position on the relationship between physics and physiology. He opens Laws of Seeing by telling the reader that it deals almost exclusively with external objects, their forms and colors, their substance and their behavior. Then, he notes that it is his intention to say little about the observer. Nevertheless, according to Metzger, Laws of Seeing is not a physics book, but a book about human nature. It is only in the last chapter that he finally asks: “Are the laws of seeing psychological or physiological laws?” Answering this question, he sums up his position:

[W]e have proceeded exclusively and without a side glance into physics, chemistry, anatomy, and physiology, from within, from the immediate percept, and without even thinking of rejecting any aspect of our findings or even just changing its (sic) place, just because it does not fit with our contemporary knowledge of nature so far. With our perceptual theory we do not bow to physiology, but rather we present challenges to it. Whether physiology will be able to address these challenges, whether on its course, by external observation of the body and its organs, it will be able to penetrate to the laws of perception, is pointless to argue about in advance

(p. 194).

Spillmann’s introduction offers some insight here:

When discussing the physiological route, Metzger shies away from attributing the laws of seeing to the physiology of the eye because of the inadequacy of physiological explanations and...

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