Observation (vs. experience)

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Revision as of 08:20, 25 October 2012

Observation in the dictionary is simply described as 'the act of observing, or being observed.' But there are more ways to explain and define this concept. In a methodological scientific way an observation is a research method with the goal to gain intimate knowledge of subjects and their habits, which insiders to a realm of practice might not otherwise reveal or are able to reveal, in contrived situations such as interviews (Gregory, Johnston, Pratt, Watts and Whatmore, 2009). A special form of observations is the participative observation, in which the researcher tries to participate in a certain process under study, with the goal to gain intimate knowledge of subjects and their habits. Despite the fact that the researcher participates in the process, he or she has to be objective and should try not to disturb the process. An observation differs from experiences. Experiences compromises knowledge gained through involvement in or exposure to a certain process or event. In an experience you undergo the given situation, while in an observation you eschew yourself from the situation and put yourself above it, so it becomes possible to get an objective image of the situation.

For most thinkers and philosophers there is more to the concept of observation, for example the German sociologist [[Niklas Luhmann][1]. He lived troughout the most of the 20th century and was one of the most prominent thinkers in the field of Sociological Systems Theory. In this work there are three central theme's:

- social systems:a set of human beings relted to each other, a system in which actions of different people refer to each other and together make sense. Individual or structured choices of man determines to whom other people refer and which actions to take. Because there is an unlimited range of choices, these must be reduced. These choices make dicisions in the future path dependend and in that way social system ermerges. A social system gets formated through complexity reduction, selection.

- communication system: Habermas takes just verbal communication as interaction. Luhmann however takes it a step futher and takes communication in general to be important, including all sorts of communication, even through media. He states that 'communication = society'

- observation system: This is the system where the term observation becomes actually important. The first characteristic of oberservation that should be mentioned, is that every observation has a blind spot. This in the sense that an observation does not observate itself, is doesn´t take itself into account and can therefore not describe itself in an objective way. Another characteristic is that the observation constitutes the observer, observation forms the observer. Here you can recognise this reduction of choice, mentioned in the part about 'social systems', earlier observations reduce choices in the future.

References:

• Arnoldi, J. (2001). Nicklas Luhmann; an introduction. Theory, Culture & Society, 18 (1), 1-13.

• Gregory, D., Johnston, R., Pratt, G., Watts, M.J., and Whatmore, S. (2009). The dictionary of human geography, 5th edition. Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford.

• Gren, m. & Zierhofer, W. (2003). The unity of difference; a critical appraisal of Niklas Luhmann's theory of social systems in the context of corporeality and spatiality. Environment and planning A, 35, 615-630.

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Published by Evelien de Beer & Richard Huttinga

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