Histories of Scientific Observation Lorraine Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck Eds

Histories of Scientific Observation Lorraine Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck Eds., Chicago, University of Chicago Press 2011 460 pp. ISBN: 978-0-226-13678-3

The editors gathered fifteen other science historians to write a total of seventeen separate articles focusing on scientific observation. They did a marvelous job of creating a descriptive history of the development of the understanding of observation. Personal observation is currently under considerable attack especially from a legal stand point these days. It seems to be an accurate concern as countless psychologists, criminologists and philosophers are writing some pretty creditable books and articles that give evidence of our very subjective ways of seeing things. We have a difficulty in accurately describing what we have observed due to our preconceptions. We see things from a bias and that seems to essentially been proven given the swarms of evidence. “Seeing is believing” is an accepted folk adage but believing is not what science is looking for.

Scientific observation means something different yet it still is fraught with subjectivity. The difference is that science builds safeguards such as testing and retesting hypotheses. It is not perfect while perhaps it strives to be. Science in the long run is self regulating. In science empiricism is a constant but sometimes cannot fulfill its task. There are constructs and models used to observe the unobservable but they can no longer be considered purely empirical. They must rely on probabilities and make no statements of assuredness. Rather they make strong suggestions and go through tests. In the end the results are strong suggestions.
Observation is basic to hypotheses. It is a low level tool in the schema needed to make predictions and explanations of phenomena. It is a starting point yet it is critical. No explanation is satisfactory without observable data. All that being said, let’s look at some of the books details.

The editors have synthesized a history based how observation was interpreted and what it was used for. Prior to the likes of Bacon or Descartes, the philosophical thinkers of the day viewed observation in a different way than we would today. It was used nearly in a religious way. Observation was a verb to describe how something is practiced. Essentially it was no different than how it is used in the phrase “Observe the Sabbath” It was intended to “prove” the existence of a Creator. Essentially the early scientists (they did not go by that name of course) were gathering data that guaranteed the existence of a God.

Gathering empirical data was only for a few purposes. Observing weather and the stars provided much information that aided in understanding things like tides and certain weather phenomenon that could make a planter change course based on data found and described. Enough data could make the planter change the types of crops to be planted or when to plant for instance.

Uses of observation increased over time. In the 16th century observation was understood as critical to the legal profession. Eye witness accounts in testimony held a much stronger sway since there were very few other tools to lend veracity to the courtroom and the lawyers relied heavily on purported self seen events and their descriptions.

There is a folk adage saying that any road will get you there if you don’t know where you are going. In the earliest stages of scientific observation the accumulation of data was essential first. This was accomplished primarily through medical records and questionnaires. In the beginning the data sought was answers to pre-ordained questions directed from the standards of authority. Leading thinkers generally from the church were directing questions (thus responses) in order to confirm what they already “knew”.

The more data collected along with an increasingly scientific methodology led to a new use for observation and that was to plan for the future-to find causes and cures. In medicine, collected observations became a genre and led to the earliest formations of scientific societies and journal publication.

Technological invention improved observation dramatically. Technology aided and abetted enlightened thinking to observation. There grew a philosophy of observation, “The perfect observer would ‘have his eyes as it were opened, that they may be struck at once with any occurrence which, according to received theories, ought not to happen; for these are the facts which serve as clews to science’ to which his observations relate’ or might inform him of ‘extraneous disturbing causes.” said musician cum astronomer, William Herschel. The tools as they improved rendered observation to a somewhat more objective science. They helped to assure the viewer that they were experiencing their data from a less subjective perspective.

The book did not enter into a realm of observation that is critical today and it was perhaps its only shortcoming. Within the quantum world for instance, there are many things that cannot be directly observed yet can provide us with grand understandings. The realm of science can make very reasoned probabilistic estimations based on known data and assumptions from previously tests. It is not the ultra empirical data that the positivists demanded. The data is not quite Popperian in that it cannot be truly falsifiable yet discarding theories such as red shift or assumptions about the geological make up of Mars would seriously hamper genuine scientific pursuit.

All told this was a difficult book to put down. The editors and the writers assembled an excellent book for the history of science. It serves as a resource guide as much as a very interesting read.