Modern science relocates the observer inside the observed system

Evidence

Finally, what distinguished the realism of the model from the reality it claimed to represent was that this central point had an occupant, the figure on the viewing platform. The representation of reality was always an exhibit set up for an observer in its midst, an observing gaze surrounded and set apart by the exhibition’s careful order. If the dazzling displays of the exhibition could evoke some larger historical and political reality, it was because they were arranged to demand this isolated gaze. The more the exhibit drew in and encircled the visitor, the more the gaze was set apart from it, as the mind is set apart from the material world it observes. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 70 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

In other words, theoretically, the transformation of man and nature has no other objective limits than those offered by the brute factuality of matter, its still unmastered resistance to knowledge and control. To the degree to which this conception becomes applicable and effective in reality, the latter is approached as a (hypothetical) system of instrumentalities; the metaphysical “being-as-such” gives way to “being-instrument.” — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 565 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The observing gaze is constituted by being set apart from its object — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 70; Surveillance architecture requires perceptual asymmetry between observer and observed — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 526; Order emerges from relations between things, not from an external observer’s frame — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 538 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• The attentive observer is herself situated inside the ecology she observes. #exemplifies (0.95)
• The observing gaze is constituted by being set apart from its object #contradicts (0.85) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 70
• Modern physics reframes reality as instrumentality rather than being #expands (0.80) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 565
• Order emerges from relations between things, not from an external observer’s frame #complicates (0.75) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 538
• Surveillance architecture requires perceptual asymmetry between observer and observed #contradicts (0.72) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 526