Where does observation collide?

The gathering of empirical evidence through the senses or instruments, treated in philosophy of science as the ground on which theories are tested, and debated for whether it can ever be neutral. Hanson's 1958 Patterns of Discovery argued that observation is theory-laden: what a person notices and how they describe it depend on the theory they already hold, so two trained people looking at the same thing can genuinely observe different things. The referent here is the knowledge-making act of seeing-and-recording as evidence, and the question of its objectivity, not a single row in a dataset, a field method carried out among people, or a telescope reading of a star.[1]

Unit

A recorded act of gathering evidence, weighed for the theory it presupposes

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Examined by analysing observation reports and the theoretical terms they carry, not by any instrument reading

Participant observation is a field research method in which the investigator takes part in the everyday life of a group over an extended period while systematically watching and recording what happens. Malinowski's 1922 Argonauts of the Western Pacific set the template, arguing that the ethnographer must live among the people studied and grasp their world from within rather than survey it from a distance. The referent is a sustained human practice of joining-in-and-noting, carried out by a researcher among people, not a datum in a table, an instrument reading of the sky, or the abstract act of seeing that philosophers analyse.[2]

Unit

A researcher's sustained engagement with a group, counted as one field study

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Documented through field notes, interviews, and records kept across the period of immersion