“Don’t think, but look!”–Merleau-Ponty would probably have endorsed this motto from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Having clarified the notion of the “perceptual field”, we can now examine what unfolds within it at its most elementary level by analysing the figure–ground relation. First studied by Rubin in 1915 and then deepened by Koffka within the epistemology of Gestalt theory, this phenomenon yields a set of qualities and functional effects that distinguish figure from ground: unlike grounds, figures have object-character, exhibit epiphanic color, are more easily localisable in perceptual space, are semantically richer, and are therefore better remembered. Figures carry an attribute of “thingness” (weight and evidential force), whereas ground acquires the more “evanescent” features of the “non-thing”.