# Observation **Domain:** Epistemology / Science / Systems **Doc Type:** Concept Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition **Observation** is the directed selection and registration of aspects of a world, event, person, or system. It requires an observer, an instrument or perceptual capacity, a boundary of attention, and criteria determining what counts as relevant. Observation produces knowledge while also compressing reality. Instruments have resolution limits; categories foreground some properties and suppress others; and observed systems may change in response to being watched. ## Corpus Context The corpus treats observation as an intervention inside a [[wiki/Feedback Loops|feedback loop]], not a perfectly detached view. This becomes explicit in [[wiki/Second-Order Cybernetics|Second-Order Cybernetics]], where the observer must be included in the account of the system. ## See Also [[wiki/Non-Observation|Non-Observation]] · [[wiki/Continuous Observation|Continuous Observation]] · [[wiki/Knowledge Representation|Knowledge Representation]] · [[wiki/State Legibility|State Legibility]] ## Journal Connections [[journal/2023-06-12 - Silence and Non-Observation|Silence and Non-Observation]] treats observation as an act of selection: the observer draws a boundary, chooses an instrument, and determines which qualities count. The journal preserves non-observation as a reminder that the resulting representation is not the whole world. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > “Truth is a pathless land. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection.” > **— Jiddu Krishnamurti**, *The Core of the Teachings, written in 1980 at the request of his biographer Mary Lutyens* [[reminders/Self-Knowledge/Truth Is a Pathless Land by Jiddu Krishnamurti|Truth Is a Pathless Land by Jiddu Krishnamurti]]