Words of Alan Watts – myth of the objective observer

I enjoy listening to the hours of recorded lectures by Alan Watts (they happen to be easily accessible to me in my favorite meditation app). This quote from my morning listen motivated me to write a few thoughts about objectivity and science, not too different from things I have said before.

“So people began to think that the differentiation between mind and matter was no use. Because actually what happens in making such a differentiation is that you impoverish both sides of it. When you try to think of matter as mindless or mind as immaterial, you get kind of a mess on both sides.”

Alan Watts – at about 1:46:00 of The Power of Space in the Sam Harris’s Waking Up App

“But, you see, what has enabled us to make a transition is first of all, above all I would say, two sciences — Biology and Neurology. Because through Biology and to some extent Physics — the methods that physics has shown us — that the idea that man can be an objective observer of an external world – that is not himself – so that as it were he can stand back from it and look at it and say “what is out there?” – we see that this cannot be done. We can approximately do it, but we cannot really and fully do it for the simple… for two reasons. One – the most important reason – is that the biologists will show us very clearly there is no way of definitively separating a human organism from its external environment. The two are single field of behavior. And then furthermore, to observe something, either simply by looking at it or more so, by making experiments, by doing science on it, you alter what you’re looking at. You cannot carry out an observation without in some way interfering with what you observe. It is this that we try when we’re watching, say, the habits of birds, to be sure the birds don’t notice us that we’re watching. To watch something, it must not know you’re looking. And of course what you ultimately want to do is to be able to watch yourself without knowing you are looking – ha ha. Then, you can really catch yourself, ahh… not on your best behavior and see yourself as you really are. But this can never be done. And likewise, the physicist cannot simultaneously establish the position and the velocity of very minute particles or wavicles. And this is in part because the experiment of observing nuclear behavior alters and affects what you are looking at. This is one side of it – the inseparability of man and his world, which deflates the myth of the objective observer standing aside and observing a world that is merely mechanical – a thing that operates as a machine out there. The second is from the science of neurology where we understand so clearly now that the kind of world we see is relative to the structure of the sense organ. That, in other words, what used to be called the qualities of the external world – its qualities of weight or color, texture, and so on are possessed by it only in relation to a perceiving organism. The very structure of our optical system confers light and color upon outside energy.”

Alan Watts – at about 1:47:44 of The Power of Space in the Sam Harris’s Waking Up App

Objectivity is a concept that keeps coming up for me in a lot of scientific work and discussions, both implicitly and explicitly. It is a concept I’m used to being frustrated over — mainly because I often feel the lack of deep thinking around it within the scientific community. It is one of those things that budding scientists are told they should value and then they take it on without ever thinking through the difficulties and challenges and complexities of being a human and being “objective” in the process of learning about the world that we cannot separate from ourselves. What does it really mean for a human being (scientist or not) to be objective in their observations or experiments? Is it possible to be objective in the way many seem to believe is possible? Can particular methods be objective in some way that is separate from the human applying the methods? What are the harms in carrying on pretending that we are capable of some level of objectivity that isn’t really possible? There may be value in working toward an ideal of objectivity in science, but that is different than pretending we can actually reach that ideal. And should we continue to value acts of pretending over honest admissions of lack of objectivity that come from actually doing the hard and uncomfortable work of interrogating the ways we *do not* meet that ideal in our own work? These thoughts are not separate from other things I have said about the importance of scientists accepting that scientists are human too and bringing this in as an integral part of doing science and thinking about the limitations of science. I think we can greatly benefit from admitting humanness is wrapped up in science , instead of pretending we can rise out of our humanness for the sake of science