For more information on Wolfgang Köhler, visit Britannica.com.

Köhler, Wolfgang (1887-1967) One of the founders of the Gestalt school of psychology, Köhler also wrote The Place of Value in a World of Facts (1938), the result of his William James lectures delivered at Harvard in 1934. Köhler attempted to work out a theory of value, including aesthetic value, on the basis of the phenomenally objective gestalt-quality which he called ‘requiredness’. One part of a visual field, for example, may demand completion in some specific way, rather as a melody may require resolution.

(kö'lər) , 1887–1967, American psychologist, b. Estonia, Ph.D. Univ. of Berlin, 1909. From 1913 to 1920 he was director of a research station on Tenerife, Canary Islands. Later he served as both professor of psychology and director of the Psychology Institute, Berlin. He came to the United States in 1934, where he became professor of psychology at Swarthmore College. Köhler is best known for his experiments with problem-solving in apes at Tenerife and the influence of his writings in the founding of the school of Gestalt psychology. His writings include Gestalt Psychology (rev. ed. 1947) and The Mentality of Apes (rev. ed. 1948).

Bibliography

See his selected papers, ed. by M. Henle (1971).

Estonian-born German psychologist. A founder of the Gestalt psychology movement, his works include The Mentality of Apes (1917) and Gestalt Psychology (1937).

Quotes:

"It has sometimes been said that we find nowhere in nature an analogue of the difference between happens and is, on the one hand, and ought, on the other hand."