Chapter 2: The Model of the Observer
Chapter 2: The Model of the Observer

Summary/Abstract: The notion of the “observer” is a basic modeling metaphor of the modernist age. It has different meanings within different cultural frames: “observation” as a scientific procedure; a model of behavior (Crary 2000: 29); a model of perception; the cognitive function of discourse, etc. The issue of the “observer” is part of a broader set of epistemological problems, which become central in relativist physics, Gestalt psychology, and the theory and practice of art and fiction. That is: how separate observations are related to the general system of knowledge and whether such an integrated system of knowledge exists at all if observation influences and shapes the observable. The crisis of the Cartesian subject entails a necessity of permanent reflexion on the observer’s relation to the world (see e.g. Yampolsky 2000)

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