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“In the fields of observation chance favours only the prepared mind.”

– Louis Pasteur

To observe is not merely to look, but to attend – to be present to the quiet patterns beneath the noise. But in a world filled with constant distraction, true observation has become all but impossible to achieve. We move far too quickly to see what’s in front of us; changing direction here, there, and everywhere, chasing novelty like a cat distracted by a laser pointer.

Both science and art begin with careful observation. The French Impressionist Claude Monet believed discovery came through “observation and reflection”, while Bertrand Russell claimed that facts must first be seen before they can be reasoned with. Between the painter’s gaze and the philosopher’s logic lies the very same act: the art of patient seeing.

Yet to observe is not always innocent. Foucault warned that “total surveillance is increasingly the general condition of society”, and that’s hard to argue: today, the watcher and the watched have merged. We carry our own cameras, curate our own visibility. The eye, once a tool of understanding, has become a mechanism of exposure, surveillance, and control.

Still, the power of personal observation remains, reminding us that seeing clearly is an ethical act – to witness, rather than to consume; to attend, rather than to judge. In the end, perhaps the truest form of observation is humility: to look closely enough to notice the changing world– and to know that we, too, are changed in the act of looking; through our own careful, conscious observation.

Zan Boag, Editor-in-Chief