The needle in the haystack: How experience in cryptoanalysis and mathematics may help in detecting and forming gestalts

Abstract

Experimental psychology and anatomy have shown that the recognition of a gestalt is a cerebral process. The appearance of a gestalt is not limited to the visual channel – the auditory and tactile channels allow the gestalt effect as well. The gestalt phenomenon can and should be extended to more subtle mental processes, such as pattern recognition and recognition by Fourier transformation. Whereas cryptoanalysis involving a search for a probable word is a gestalt recognition problem, cryptoanalysis achieved by finding a periodic key is a task requiring the formation of a gestalt. Moreover, in mathematics a family of equivalent theories has a gestalt, and methods developed for recognising such gestalts may one day be transferred to studies in physics, biology, and psychology to decrypt the secrets of nature.