Wolfgang Köhler, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The ape does not grope its way to a solution by blind, gradual trial and error; it solves the problem by seeing the situation anew. After a period in which nothing happens, the field reorganises — the two short sticks become one long tool, the boxes become a stair — and the solution appears whole, at once, and is thereafter repeated cleanly.1 Insight is the perception of a new structure, not the accretion of rewarded movements.23
'CHANCE" AND " IMITATION " 191 insight, appears to some students not at all obvious, but rather as a sort of belief in miracles. No such superstition is meant or prepared here, and nothing that has been said involves it in the slightest.] How one is to explain that the field as a whole, the relations of the parts of the situation to one another, etc., determine the solution, belong to the theory.The Mentality of Apes
The animals "CHANCE" AND " IMITATION " 193 would never have hit on this kind of trying, if an attempt genuine in outline had not put them in a position, with the special conditions of which they were not able to deal.The Mentality of Apes
In principle Grande solved the problem too, so the box is lifted by the observer, placed firmly on the lower one, and held there, while Grande climbs up and reaches the objective. But she does all this with the greatest mistrust. (22.2) Grande, Chica, and Rana are present.The Mentality of Apes
That genuine insight occurs — sudden, structural, transferable — I hold on the evidence of what the animals did; that ALL learning is insight I never claimed, and trial-and-error plainly has its place where the situation cannot be surveyed. The question is whether association is the whole of learning, and the ape's clean, sudden solution shows it is not.