Given the extreme significance of observation for scientific insights and innovation (2021-11-12Frames turn our observations into tunnel vision; to be innovative, be observant first! - 簡書 (jianshu.com)), let's have more discussion on it, based on the eighth chapter in The art of scientific investigation (1957, by W.I.B.Beveridge).

"Knowledge comes from noticing resemblances and recurrences in the events that happen around us."? ? —Wilfred Trotter

I pretty like this quotation, because it perfectly captures the essence of effective learning and understanding (2021-09-29怎樣寫閱讀筆記？ - 簡書 (jianshu.com)) and the innovation process (2021-09-24創造的腳手架——想法的連接 - 簡書 (jianshu.com)): building connections. To notice the resemblances between things on the surface appear unrelated, you must consciously and intentionally pay attention to the features of each, dig out the cognitive prototypes for each, and then find the commonalities. So observation is the ground base both for deep understanding and for innovation generation.

What are the characteristics of human observation? Beveridge outlined several points:

1. Observers always miss many obvious things; and invent many imagined false observations. Thinking about the film-watching process. Many clues, although with special significance will be unnoticed by many; also, we mentally fill many gaps between frames.

2. "We are prone to see what lies behind our eyes rather than what appears before them", the old saying depicts how human observations are biased and even blinded by the pre-existing experence, knowledge, expectation and emotion, etc.. Remembering the old saying "One thousand readers, one thousand Hamlets".

3. Although with many things repeatedly happen around us, we do not mentally register them in mind. This point illustrates how habits or rountine behaviors heavily blind our observations.

4. We are sensitive to changes, although we may have no idea about the details of the previous scene/state. This is determined by the facts that the brain is a resource-limited machinery.

All kinds of observations are comprised by two elements: 1. the sense-perceptual element; 2. the mental element, which can be partly conscious and partly unconscious. Obviously, the latter is of critical import for human beings to draw meaningful observing. However, under some situations, perception-based intuition may have unexpected influence on observations.

The above is the open discussion about human observations. How observation plays its roles in scientific investigation? In An introduction to the study of experimental medicine (1865, a classic discussing the processes of how scientists do investigations through introspection of personal experience, we will discuss it in the future), Claude Bernard divided scientific observations into two categories: 1. spontaneous or passive observations with unexpectedness and out of expectation; 2. induced or active observations seeking to test a specific hypothesis. Usually, the former may cultivate ground-breaking discoveries, while the latter mainly do the tinker's work. Most investigations belong to the latter; its contributions depend on the depth you can reach and the significance you can dig out.

"Eflfective spontaneous observation involves firstly noticing some object or event. The thing noticed will only become significant if the mind of the observer either consciously or unconsciously relates it to some relevant knowledge or past experience, or if in pondering on it subsequently he arrives at some hypothesis." This is one typical pattern of scientific investigation: observing the phenomenon unexpectedly at first, and then proposing a hypothesis to accout for the observations. It reminds me to think of Wolfram Schultz, who unexpectedly observed that dopamine neurons could encode reward-related information, which was contradicted with the conventional idea believing that dopamine is responsible for movement control. So during the first five years, nobody believed in the unexpected observations, which made trouble for Schultz to publish their papers at the time. Several years later, somehow (?) Schultz suddenly (?) been aware of the great fitness when applying the learning theory in psychological studies to account for the unexpected observations of dopamine neurons. At the point, he made the dopamine field blowed up. This is one of the ground-breaking work in neuroscience in recent decades, and it makes him as a hot candidate for Nobel prize.

"In the last section attention was called to the fact that the mind is particularly sensitive to changes or differences. This is of use in scientific observation, but what is more important and more difficult is to observe (in this instance mainly a mental process) resemblances or correlations between things that on the surface appeared quite unrelated." To be acute/sensitive to the hidden resemblances and similarities between those superficially unrelated things, I think we must, consciously and purposefully, try our best to be a 'connection builder' in daily life. That is we must keep practicing to find the connections between different things, for instance what are the commonalities between a book and a train. Only in this way, we might train ourselves to be a researcher with penetrating insights.

There is a dilemma in scientific observation: we can not observe all aspects of experimental results, which means that we must selectively discriminate what is more important. Usually scientists with distinct backgrounds will pay attention to distinct aspects which they believed as the important things based on their previous training. This is an inevitable limitation inherently endowed by the current specialized education system. And in fact, it has the most severe impacts on junior researchers, who mastered relatively fewer frames in mind. To differentiate what is important, in many cases, you will hold a predefined hypothesis at hand, make directed predictions/expectation, and bias the observations. It means that we shall missed some unexpected, but might significant occurences.

"If, when we are experimenting, we confine our attention to only those things we expect to see, we shall probably miss the unexpected occurrences and these, even though they may at first be disturbing and troublesome, are the most likely to point the way to important unsuspected facts. It has been said that it is the exceptional phenomenon which is likely to lead to the explanation of the usual. When an irregularity is noticed, look for something with which it might be associated. In order to make original observations the best attitude is not to concentrate exclusively on the main point but to try and keep a look-out for the unexpected, remembering that observation is not passively watching but is an active mental process." It's a real insightful suggestion! In practice, I think we can hold several expectations at hand, but also keep an open mind to other possibilities.

"More discoveries have arisen from intense observation of very limited material than from statistics applied to large groups." This point reminds me of the old chinese saying: 見一葉而知秋。In real research, this strategy can save researchers lots of efforts and time to struggle with huge data sets and statistics. It is helpful for establishing a direction, especially at the early state of investigations.

How to train ourselves to be an observant researcher? Beveridge also give his suggestions:? "Training in observation follows the same principles as training in any activity. At first one must do things consciously and laboriously, but with practice the activities gradually become automatic and unconscious and a habit is established. Effective scientific observation also requires? a good background, for only by being familiar with the usual can we notice something as being unusual or unexplained." The last point should be stressed specifically: to know what is unknown, we must know what is known. It means that to be innovative in scientific investigation, we must master a sufficient amount of? knowledge at first. That is Do Enough Readings!