1880–1943

GERMAN-AMERICAN PROFESSOR, LECTURER UNIVERSITY OF PRAGUE, PHILOSOPHY, 1902; UNIVERSITY OF WÜRZBURG, PhD IN PHILOSOPHY, 1904

Brief Overview

Science is rooted in the will to truth. With the will to truth it stands or falls. Lower the standard even slightly and science becomes diseased to the core. Not only science, but also man. The will to truth, pure and unadulterated, is among the essential conditions of his existence; if the standard is compromised, he easily becomes a tragic caricature of himself.

—Max Wertheimer, "On Truth," published in Social Research in 1934.

For Max Wertheimer and the Gestalt therapy for which he became best known, truth began with a train trip and a simple child's toy. When 30-year-old Wertheimer left Vienna, Austria for a vacation in Germany's Rhineland in 1910, he had no idea that his holiday would never come to be. Equally he had no idea that his idle thoughts...