Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

ISSN: 0007-1773 (Print) 2332-0486 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbsp20

Gurwitsch, Piaget and Gestalt Theory

Wolfe Mays

To cite this article: Wolfe Mays (1981) Gurwitsch, Piaget and Gestalt Theory, Journal of the
British Society for Phenomenology, 12:2, 175-178, DOI: 10.1080/00071773.1981.11007537

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071773.1981.11007537

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Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology. Vol. 12 No.2, May 1981

~I8CUSSIO!{
Gurwitsch, Piaget and Gestalt Theory
WOLFE MAYS
I.
As Osborne Wiggins has shown in his excellent article on "Piaget and
Gurwitsch", I there are certain similarities between their respective philosophical
positions. 2 Both are, for example, interested in the growth of knowledge- in the
development of the conceptual structures in terms of which we interpret the world
around us. Gurwitsch's approach initially derives from Husserl's genetic phenom-
enology. On Husserl's account, Gurwitsch points out, human and scientific develop-
ment is regarded as a continuous development of similar types of experience -
successive idealisations or ways of interpreting the world -which become sedi-
mented in the form of continuous structures on a common Lebenswelt. 3
Gurwitsch, however, does not believe that Husserl's theory of sedimentation
gives an accurate picture of the growth of knowledge. Human development, he
argues, rather occurs through stages of basic reorganisation and transformation:
these change completely the fundamental structures through which the world is
seen and interpreted. In taking up this approach Gurwitsch, as he admits, was
influenced by Gestalt psychology and its account of the way the perceptual field
undergoes a sudden reorganisation to produce new Gestalten. 4
In his reconstruction of genetic phenomenology, Gurwitsch also takes note of
Piaget's work in child psychology.s Piaget, Gurwitsch points out, has studied the
growth of sensori-motor intelligence in the child, and has shown that the child's
conception of the world passes through several phases. At first the child lives in a
universe centred upon himself, in which permanent objects do not as yet exist. At
a later stage there is a development to a world made up of independent objects
having to each other spatial, temporal and causal relations. These relations are no
longer dependent, as they were earlier, on the subject's activities, who now
becomes aware of himself as different from other people and things. 6
We cannot therefore, Gurwitsch argues, maintain as Husser! presumably
would, that the objectified world of the adult results from the earlier egocentric
world by the superposition of layers of sense, nor can we by the simple removal of
such layers from our everyday common experience revert to its egocentric begin-
nings. As this shift to the adult world is marked by a radical change in structure and
is hence discontinuous, we must, Gurwitsch says, utilise the model of Gestalt
change as well as that of sedimentation. 7

II.
Piaget would agree with Gurwitsch that the different conceptions of reality
manifested from childhood onwards are not simply sedimented on each other like
175
geological strata. In both the development of child mentality and the history of
scientific thought, we deal, he would say, with a reconstruction of earlier more
primitive views. During the course of such development certain subjective aspects
of the experienced world are eliminated, and other more objective features
emphasised. For example, causal explanation ceases to be anthropomorphic and
in modern physics takes on a more formal implicatory character. On the other
hand, for Piaget the adult conception of the world, despite its radically different
character, is still deeply rooted in the earlier structures implicit in the child's
experience.
It also seems doubtful whether Husserl was using the notion of sedimentation
other than in a metaphorical sense. When he refers to the Galilean idealisation of
nature as a garment of ideas clothing our Lebenswelt, and urges us to strip away
such idealisations so as to return to our originary experience, he could not have
been meaning this in a strictly literal sense. If pressed Husserl would probably
have agreed with Piaget that the more primitive structures are hierarchically
subsumed under the more complex ones of our adult world. Husserl's use of the
metaphor of sedimentation with its static geological and archaeological overtones,
obscures this fact. Gurwitsch then has a point, when he says that Husserl's theory
does not adequately bring out the way each such world view is reconstructed and
transformed during development.
On the other hand, Gurwitsch's contention that the passage from one world
view to another proceeds by sudden Gestalt shifts, assumes that there is a basic
discontinuity between these levels: that the lower become transformed into the
higher by something like a process of emergent evolution. However, not only may
there be a historical continuity between them, there can in some cases be a
structural similarity. Nothing, for example, would seem more revolutionary in the
history of science than the change from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican world
view. Formally, however, they are similar. In both systems, there is a correspon-
dence between the relative positions of the heavenly bodies, so that each can be
considered as a projection of the other. The discontinuity between them is
therefore not as great as would appear at first sight.
As far as Gestalt theory is concerned, it must not be overlooked that Husser!
was critical of its non-historical approach to perception.s For Husser! memory
plays an important part in our construction of a world of enduring objects. 9 There
is, he would argue, a continuing influence of past perceptions on our present
experience: 10 these form habitualitiestt or dispositions and play an active role in
the determination of the sense of perceived objects. Thus when we see an unknown
object we assimilate it to a class of objects with which we are already familiar.
Husser! claims that it is only because physical things have a history, that they can
be experienced, as it were, at a 'first glance'. 12
Piaget too was critical of Gestalt theory for somewhat similar reasons. It
considers, he tells us, the laws of organisation as independent of the development
with age of the mechanisms underlying perceptual constancy, 13 but Piaget con-
tends such development does occur.t4 Further, he notes, the study of the child's
first two years of life has shown that there are indeed complex structures and
configurations in the child's sensori-motor intelligence. But, he goes on, far from
being static and non-historical, they constitute schemata which grow out of each
other by means of successive differentiations and integrations. Schemata for
176
Piaget then have a history: they are "typical manners of conduct over against
typical kinds of object",IS and resemble Husserl's habitualities. Like them they
retain some form of unconscious existence.

III.
Gurwitsch is fully aware that Piaget has criticised Gestalt theory for overlook-
ing the historical context of intellectual development. Piaget, he says, objects to
Gestalt theory because it represents the solution to a problem and the performance
of an achievement as a sudden reorganisation and transformation which depends
on the maturity and not the past history of the individual. Gurwitsch counters
Piaget's criticism by arguing that to give an account of the conditions of achieve-
ment- one describing the way in which the individual arrives at a particular solution
- is not equivalent to an account in terms of the actual achievement. Gurwitsch
concludes that Piaget is rather interested in the former question than the latter. I6
It is clear that Gurwitsch is himself primarily concerned with the actual
achievement - with how we experience the solution of a new problem and the
factors intervening in its solution. To illustrate his position he considers an actual
mathematical problem. In order that we may reach a solution, he tells us, the
problem needs to be reorganised and reconstructed so that it can be referred to
some particular formula and appear as falling under it. The point to be stressed,
Gurwitsch goes on, is "that in the case of a successful solution to a problem, this
reorganization does occur and is experienced as a most essential factor in the phase
of actual achievement".!?
Piaget is certainly aware of the fact that the conditions of achievement are not
to be equated with the actual achievement, but he would also emphasise that they
complement each other. This is the whole point of his distinction between the
diachronic (temporal) and the synchronic (structural) modes of explanation, both
of which, he holds, are essential in any explanation of intellectual activity. Piaget
would also agree that the solution of a problem as it occurs on the phenomenal
level, has all the appearance of a sudden emergence of a completed structure.
However, as we shall see, he explains this occurrence somewhat differently than
Gestalt theory does.
As an example of the way Gestalt theory attempts to deal with problem
solving, Piaget looks at Wertheimer's explanation of syllogistic reasoning.
According to Wertheimer, when we solve a syllogistic problem, the conclusion
results from a Gestalt reorganisation of the premises, just as in perception a new
configuration emerges through the reorganisation of the existing perceptual struc-
tures. Piaget does not, however, think that this comparison is a valid one.IB What
he regards as essential in syllogistic reasoning, is rather the process of combination
-the way one proceeds from premises to conclusion in accordance with a definite
rule, although he does recognise that the process may not be a fully conscious one.
Piaget's approach to the question of actual achievement then differs from that
of Gurwitsch's who, as we have seen, explains the appearance of the solution in
terms of a Gestalt reorganisation of the problem. On the other hand, Piaget would
argue that although the subject appears to grasp the solution in the form of a
sudden Gestalt change, this may often be the end-result of what is largely an
unconscious process. He points out, for example, that a child can solve a logical or
simple mathematical problem, by methods of which he may not be fully conscious,
and it is this which gives the appearance of the solution its sudden insightful
character.
177
 To summarise the above discussion, Gestalt theory by the very nature of its
synchronic approach, tends to regard the structures given in perception as auton-
omous. In Husserl's genetic phenomenology our perceptual experience only
obtains its significance through past perceptions and judgments. These continue
to have some form of functional existence in what Husser! refers to as "the
universal substratum - the so-called unconscious". t9 Piaget too by emphasising
the importance of the diachronic approach, takes up a somewhat similar position.
A phenomenology whose descriptions presuppose the primacy of perception
would no doubt be unsympathetic to the introduction of the unconscious as a
determinant of perceptual meaning, and sympathetic to a Gestalt doctrine. 2o

Institute of Advanced Studies,

Manchester Polytechnic.
References
I. See this number (JBSP, Vol. 12, No.2).
2. As the passage from Insights and Jllusions of Philosophy quoted by Wiggins shows,
Piaget recognised this. I should add that when this journal was first started I wrote to
Pia~et asking whether he would be willing to serve as a member of our editorial
advtsory board. He politely refused, saying that if he agreed this might be misunder-
stood, although he realised that our sort of phenomenology like that of Gurwitsch of
New York had much in common with his own thought.
3. Aron Gurwitsch, "The Phenomenology of Perception", in James M. Edie (ed.), An
Invitation to Phenomenology (Chicago 1965), cf. pp. 26-7.
4. ---,"The place of psychology in the system of the sciences", Studies in Philosophy
and Psychology (Evanston 1966), pp. 55-6.
5. ---,The Field of Consciousness, (Pittsburgh !964), p. 39.
6. "The Phenomenology of Perception", cf. p. 27.
7. Ibid. p. 28.
8. Edmund Husser!, Cartesian Meditations, trs. Dorian Cairns, (The Hague 1960), cf. p.
76.
9. ---,Experience and Judgment, trs. James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks, (London
1973), p. 385.
10. ---,Formal and Transcendental Logic, trs. Dorian Cairns (The Hague 1969), cf.
pp.319,321.
II. Cartesian Meditations, p. Ill.
12. Ibid. cf. p. 79.
13. Jean Piaget, Psychology of Intelligence, trs. Malcolm Piercy and D. E. Berlyne (New
York 1963), cf. pp. 56-9.
14. Ibid. pp. 60-6.
15. As Rtchard M. Zaner aptly puts it in his The Problem of Embodiment (The Hague
1964), p. 171.
16. The Field of Consciousness, p. 47.
17. Ibid. p. 48.
18. Psychology of Intelligence, cf. pp. 59-60.
19. Formal and Transcendental Logic, p. 319.
20. I have also treated the questions dtscussed above in, "Piaget: formal and non-formal
elements in the child's conception of causality", Bernard Curtis and Wolfe Mays
(eds.), Phenomenology and Education (London 1978),pp. 62-7, and in "Genetic
Analysis and Experience: Husser! and Piaget", JBSP, Vol. 8, No. I, January 1977, pp.
51-5.

178