Other rather than greater

I'm sure that I don't need to tell you who Kurt Koffka was and the importance of his work in both social psychology and gestalt psychology. In fact I'm sure you'll agree that Koffka's work in drawing together the separate philosophical strands, which include the works of Kant, Goethe, Hume and others, more than supports claims that he was an early spokesman for the gestalt psychology movement.  Of course you might not be completely across the pioneering work of this early 20th century philosopher and psychologist but you might be familiar with a phrase often attributed to him.

I'm not going to bore you with a discussion about the underlying principles of gestalt. I'm sure that you are all far more familiar with its nooks and crannies than I am but we can agree with the broad view that it relates to holism. As with broader social psychology gestalt is about the relationship between the whole and components and this is where I would draw your attention to the title of this blip. Koffka said that "the whole is other than the sum of its parts" and he was greatly distressed when this was mistranslated as "the whole being greater than the sum of its parts".

I hope that you don't mind me getting that off my chest. I know that you guys were already aware of it but I felt that I needed to write it out for myself - the act of writing helps with internalising stuff.

My car decided that it was taking a day off so the image is a dashboard dancer in my neighbour's camper van