Editing Gestalt psychology (section)

=== Support from cybernetics and neurology ===
In the 1940s and 1950s, [[laboratory]] research in [[neurology]] and what became known as [[cybernetics]] on the mechanism of frogs' eyes indicate that [[perception]] of 'gestalts' (in particular gestalts ''in motion'') is perhaps more primitive and fundamental than 'seeing' as such:

:A frog hunts on land by vision... He has no fovea, or region of greatest acuity in vision, upon which he must centre a part of the image... The frog does not seem to see or, at any rate, is not concerned with the detail of stationary parts of the world around him. He will starve to death surrounded by food if it is not moving. His choice of food is determined only by size and movement. He will leap to capture any object the size of an insect or worm, providing it moves like one. He can be fooled easily not only by a piece of dangled meat but by any moving small object... He does remember a moving thing provided it stays within his field of vision and he is not distracted.<ref>Lettvin, J.Y., Maturana, H.R., Pitts, W.H., and McCulloch, W.S. (1961). Two Remarks on the Visual System of the Frog. In Sensory Communication edited by Walter Rosenblith, MIT Press and John Wiley and Sons: New York</ref>

:The lowest-level concepts related to visual perception for a human being probably differ little from the concepts of a frog. In any case, the structure of the [[retina]] in [[mammal]]s and in [[human being]]s is the same as in amphibians. The phenomenon of distortion of perception of an image stabilised on the retina gives some idea of the concepts of the subsequent levels of the hierarchy. This is a very interesting phenomenon. When a person looks at an immobile object, "fixes" it with his eyes, the eyeballs do not remain absolutely immobile; they make small involuntary movements. As a result, the image of the object on the retina is constantly in motion, slowly drifting and jumping back to the point of maximum sensitivity. The image "marks time" in the vicinity of this point.<ref>Valentin Fedorovich Turchin – The phenomenon of science – a cybernetic approach to human evolution – Columbia University Press, 1977</ref>