Karl Duncker

Karl Duncker (February 2, 1903 in Leipzig — February 23, 1940) was a representative of the Gestalt Theory of psychology. He attended Friedrich-Wilhelms-University from 1923 to 1923, spent 1925-1926 at Clark University in Worcester, MA as a visiting professor, where he received a masters in arts degree. [ Schnall, Simone, "Thinking in psychological science: ideas and their makers" (editor: Jaan Valsiner), Transaction Publishers, 2007 ] Until 1935 he was a student and assistant of the founders of Gestalt psychology in Berlin: Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka.In 1935, exiled by the Nazis, he got an assistantship in Cambridge with Frederic Charles Bartlett and later emigrated to the USA where he was again an assistant of Wolfgang Köhler’s at Swarthmore College. He committed suicide at 37 years of age.

Achievements

Duncker coined the term functional fixedness for describing the difficulties in visual perception and in problem solving that arise from the fact that one element of a whole situation already has a (fixed)function which has to be changed for making the correct perception or for finding the solution to the problem. ["Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens", Springer, Berlin 1935 ]

In his “candle problem” the situation was defined by the objects: a box of candles, a box of thumb-tacks and a box of matches. The task was to fix the candles on the wall without any additional elements. The difficulty of this problem arises from the functional fixedness of the candle box. It is a container in the problem situation but must be used as a shelf in the solution situation.

Other examples for this type of mental restructuring are:

* an electromagnet must be used as part of a pendulum
* a branch of a tree must be used as a tool
* a brick must be used a paper weight
* another meaning of a word must be found that is different from the meaning within the context of the sentence

Publications

*"Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens", Springer, Berlin 1935

(Psychology of productive thinking)

*"Behaviorismus und Gestaltpsychologie". In: "Erkenntnis 3", S. 162-176

*"Lernen und Einsicht im Dienst der Zielerreichung". In: "Acta Psychologica", Hague, 1, S. 77-82

(Learning and insight for reaching goals)

*"Ethical Relativity? An enquiry into the psychology of ethics". In: "Mind 48", S. 39-57

*"On pleasure, emotion, and striving". In: "Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 1", S. 391-430.

See also

* Schnall, S. (2007). [http://faculty.virginia.edu/schnall/Schnall.pdf Life as the problem: Karl Duncker's context] . In "Thinking in psychological science: ideas and their makers" (editor: Jaan Valsiner), Transaction Publishers, 2007.
* [http://faculty.virginia.edu/schnall/Duncker.htm Insights into Life: The Drama of Karl Duncker] : collection of papers by Simone Schnall; Herbert A. Simon; Jeanette A. Lawrence & Agnes E. Dodds; Kurt Fischer & Jeffrey Stewart

References