Gestaltpsychologie

Gestaltpsychologie (German) is a school of psychology which holds that men grasp the meaning or reality of things according to the form, pattern, configuration or arrangement of the units or parts as they appear in the whole rather than in a breakdown or summation of the individual units, parts or sub-wholes of the wholes. Examples: a musical melody has greater significance to the hearer than the same tones played at random; three equal lines arranged as an equilateral triangle present an intellectual association of greater significance than the same lines otherwise arranged.