A clear look
“What we can know, and what we can understand, is so influenced by our location in time that it is impossible for us to disentangle that…
Observation
Essays and ideas exploring observation, attention, perception, interpretation, and what it means to truly notice the world around us.
Explore Observation
Seen and unseen
There’s something deflating about the first time you spot a nebula through a telescope. You’re standing outside in the dark and the cold, squinting and fiddling…
Invisible experience
In our current cultural moment, when the boundaries between public and private have been largely erased, Calle’s investigations are prescient. In 1979, Sophie…
NFN: To see or not to see
“So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power…
NFN: The bystander effect
“If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” –Anonymous In 1964,…
NFN: Seeing
“To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.” – Marilyn vos Savant A botanist and a poet wander…
NFN: A blink of an eye
“The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth…
Observation is all we have
Zan Boag: What does the word ‘observation’ evoke for you as a psychologist and a philosopher of mind, whose work has been about observing ourselves and…
NFN: A form of power
“No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.” — Niels Bohr In quantum physics, the ‘observer effect’ refers to the…
The fourth wall
It seems that Erving Goffman was not a nice man. He liked to ruffle feathers and watch the fallout. One time he invited a group of…
The invisible gorilla
Zan Boag: Interestingly, my daughter has been studying your gorilla experiment at college over the last month. I’ve showed it to several people as well, and…
