ABSTRACT:
The early major work of Wolfgang Metzger "Gesetze des Sehens" (laws of seeing) first appeared in serial part issues, edited by the Senckenbergische Naturforschende Gesellschaft in Frankfurt. Expanded editions were printed in 1936, 1954, and 1975. Metzger's devotion to this work was monumental. He continued to supplement his collection of phenomena from everyday perception and the fine arts, always endeavoring to find ever more compelling illustrations for the Gestalt point of view. It is a masterpiece for those who come to it without an intense background in the psychology of perception; in a nontechnical style Metzger moves the reader toward a deeper experience, and sometimes an altered conception, of the visual world. A belated English translation of the first edition of this book was published in 2006 by MIT-Press (translation by Lothar Spillmann, Steven Lehar, Mimsey Stromeyer and Michael Wertheimer) under the title "Laws of Seeing".
