New Philosopher

“In the fields of observation chance favours only the prepared mind.” - Louis Pasteur To observe is not merely to look, but to attend – to be present to the quiet patterns beneath the noise. But in a world filled with constant distraction, true observation has become all but impossible to achieve. We move far too quickly to see what’s in front of us; changing direction here, there, and everywhere, chasing novelty like a cat distracted by a laser pointer. Both science and art begin with careful observation. The French Impressionist Claude Monet believed discovery came through “observation and reflection”, while Bertrand Russell claimed that facts must first be seen before they can be reasoned with. Between the painter’s gaze and the philosopher’s logic lies the very same act: the…

Daniel Simons Daniel J. Simons is Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois where he heads the Visual Cognition Laboratory. He is a Fellow and Charter Member of the Association for Psychological Science, a fellow of the Psychonomic Society, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, and he has received many awards for his research and teaching, including the 2003 Early Career Award from the American Psychological Association. He is the author the 2010 New York Times bestseller, The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us. Nicholas Humphrey Nicholas Humphrey is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at London School of Economics and Bye Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge. He was the first to demonstrate the existence of ‘blindsight’ after brain damage in monkeys and originated the theory of the social function of…

“No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.”— Niels Bohr In quantum physics, the ‘observer effect’ refers to the way the act of measurement changes the thing being measured. At the subatomic level, this is not metaphor but law: observing a particle alters its behaviour. As physicist Werner Heisenberg wrote, “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” The very act of looking rearranges what is seen. The same is true in our everyday lives. No observation is without consequence. Point a camera at a crowd, and people begin to perform. Ask a child to “act natural” and watch how quickly they stiffen. Even in solitude, the sense of being watched – by others, by unseen authority, by the…

The average human blinks between 15 and 20 times each minute. Each blink lasts around 300 milliseconds, which means you spend almost one-tenth of your waking hours in darkness. And yet, if you were asked what you saw in those moments, you would likely insist: “Everything.” Your mind edits these lapses into a seamless narrative. Like a skilled film editor, it stitches frames together so that the gaps vanish. The ‘you’ that is watching the world is, in truth, watching a story created after the fact – an internal reconstruction, not a raw feed from reality. This is one of the first humbling lessons of observation: you are never seeing ‘everything’ – your eyes are not cameras; they are gatekeepers. They pass along fragments. The mind then fills in the…

A botanist and a poet wander through the same summer meadow. The botanist notes the serrated edge of a leaf, the reproductive strategy of a yellow bloom. The poet notices the way the stem sways in the wind, the fade of pale yellow at the petal’s edge. Which is the truer observation? . Observation is never neutral. We don’t simply ‘see’; we select. The lens through which we look – our training, desires, cultural inheritance – shapes the world that reaches us. The botanist’s field notes and the poet’s verse are both honest records, yet neither contains the full meadow. This is not a weakness of observation but its nature. Every act of seeing is guided by a question, whether we know it or not. A scientist asks: What is…

In 1964, the murder of Kitty Genovese in New York shocked the world – not only for its violence, but for what appeared to be the passivity of those who saw or heard it. Reports claimed dozens of neighbours failed to intervene or even call the police. Though later investigations revealed the original story had been exaggerated, the image of the silent crowd lingered. Psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané seized on the event and began a series of experiments. They discovered a troubling pattern: the more witnesses present, the less likely any individual was to help. Responsibility, it seemed, was a fragile thing, quick to dissolve into the crowd. Their findings outlined the steps between perception and action. First comes noticing. Then comes interpretation – is this truly an…