Eighty-two years ago today, on October 21, 1943 (September 23, 1943), German psychologist Wertheimer died. Wertheimer. Max (188O~ 1943) German psychologist and founder of Gestalt psychology. Born in Prague during the Austro-Hungarian Empire on April 15, 1880, and died on October 21, 1943 in New Rochelle, New York. His father, William, headed a private business school for many years, and his mother, an accomplished amateur violinist. Wertheimer studied at a Catholic school in Prague and later attended Charles University in Prague, where he began to major in law, then in philosophy and psychology. At that time, the philosopher and psychologist C. Von Erlenfeld's teaching left a profound influence on Wetheimer. In 1902, Wetheimer transferred to the University of Berlin and studied philosophy and psychology with some famous people, especially C. Stumpf. In 19O4, he entered the University of Würzburg, and in the same year, under the supervision of Kulpe, he received a Doctor of Philosophy with the dissertation "Word Association Methods for the Detection of Criminals". During the six years after receiving the Doctor of Philosophy, Wetheimer worked in psychological and physiological institutions and clinics in Vienna, Berlin, Würzburg, Prague, etc., where he further experimented with word association techniques and applied the methods of experimental psychology to the clinical study of aphasia. In the summer of 1910, when Witheimer suddenly realized the perception of visual motion on a train to a resort, he got off the train in Frankfurt, bought a toy animator, and began perceptual experiments in his hotel room. Soon, he transferred the research to the F. Schumann Institute of Psychology at the Frankfurt Academy (later Frankfurt University), where W. Kohler and K. Kaufka served as subjects for these experiments and jointly explained the principles of the influential Gestalt school of psychology. The three of them regarded the experiment of "kinetic phenomena" (that is, the perception of a virtually static stimulus into a particular form of motion) as a refutation of popular perceptual theories. The results of these studies were published in the Journal of Psychology (1912), marking the birth of the Gestalt school. Wertheimer worked in Frankfurt for many years, during World War I, he conducted research on the design of sound source detection in the army, and entered the University of Berlin in 1922. In 1929, Wertheimer became the head of the psychology department at Frankfurt University. In early 1933, intimidated by Hitler's persecution, he moved to the former Czechoslovakia, and later settled in the United States. He taught at the New School for Social Research in New York until his death in 1943. In the last decade, Wertheimer expanded the Gestalt principle to many new fields. In October 1988, the German Psychological Society posthumously awarded Wertheimer a Wundt badge, which was the highest honor of the society, confirming his contributions to experimental research, theoretical creation, and attention to human problems. In the study of motion-like phenomena, Wertheimer believes that motion-like phenomena are a gestalt. The properties of the gestalt do not exist in the parts, but are attached to the whole psychophysical situation. Therefore, the study of the parts cannot explain the nature of the whole. Starting from this phenomenon, Wertheimer further believes that the whole cannot be analyzed as an element in all psychological phenomena of human beings. The whole is not equal to the sum of the parts. The whole precedes the parts and is greater than the sum of the parts, and determines the properties of the parts. In the study of creative thinking, Wertheimer applied the principles of Gestalt psychology to the study of human creative thinking. From a large number of studies, he found that human creative thinking is to break the old Gestalt and discover the new Gestalt. Therefore, he put forward three methodological principles of scientific creation, namely the principle of logic-non-logic complementarity; the principle of structure-integrity; and the principle of harmony-simplicity. At the same time, Wertheimer also pointed out that teachers should educate students to break the box and be innovative, so as to cultivate students' creative thinking. Gestalt psychology was born in Germany in 1912 and later further developed in the United States. It adopted E. Husserl's phenomenological point of view, arguing that psychology studies the experience of phenomena, that is, neutral experience that is not mind but not matter. When observing the experience of phenomena, it should maintain the original appearance of this phenomenon, and it is not allowed to analyze it as sensory elements. It believes that the experience of phenomena is a whole or a Gestalt, so it is called Gestalt psychology. Since the main research in the early days of this system was done in the laboratory of the University of Berlin, it is sometimes called the Berlin School. The main leaders were M. Wertheimer, W. Koehler, and K. Kovka. The Gestalt school started with the experiment of kinetic phenomena. The experiment was conducted by Wertheimer, and the observers were Koehler and Kovka. The experiment uses a tachograph to project two bright straight lines a and b successively on a black background. If the interval between the two lines is too long, such as 2000 or 200 milliseconds, the observer can see the a line first and then the b line, and no movement is seen; if the interval is too short, such as 30 milliseconds, the two lines can be seen at the same time, and no movement is seen; if the time interval is between the two, such as 60 milliseconds, it can be seen that the a line moves to the b line, or only the movement is seen, and the line is not seen, this is called a motion-like phenomenon, which is the same as what is seen when watching a movie. The photo of the movie is still, but the audience sees the activity of the characters during the screening. Previous people have already discovered this kind of motion-like phenomenon, but Wertheimer's explanation for it is novel. When previous psychologists explained motion perception, they either adopted the theory of eye movement, the theory of afterimage mixture, or the theory of association, thinking that there are some sensory elements first, and then these elements are combined to form motion perception. But Wertheimer ruled out these explanations one by one. Experiments have shown that eye movements take at least 130 milliseconds, and it is impossible to produce eye movements in 60 milliseconds. Secondly, the theory of afterimage mixture is also difficult to hold, because when the eyeball does not move, how can there be a mixture of afterimages? Thirdly, the associative theory is also not supported, because according to the reports of observers of kinesthetic phenomena, what they see is a line moving, or only seeing the movement but not the line, not seeing the A line first, then the B line, and then the combined effect of the sensations of the two lines forms the perception of motion. Therefore, the perception of motion is a gestalt and cannot be explained as a combination of sensory elements.