CHAPTER II

OBSERVATION AND THE TAKING OF NOTES

OUR first more explicit discussion is on observation, (in the very broad and useful psychologic usage of the term) and then on the taking of notes. Most of our learning comes from this Cosmos, this "environment", - our surroundings, spiritual and material, finite and infinite. The relation between the Cosmos and our minds is dependent largely upon the process of observation, including the observing of our own minds. The term observation suggests an important element of learning; in fact, learning is unthinkable without it, especially perhaps in the natural sciences, of which there are now so many. Observation is obviously a form of note-taking; it is taking notes and writing them "on the tablets of the memory", on brain instead of on paper.

There are two kinds of observation. There is a primary knowledge of nature outdoors, and under somewhat artificial conditions in the laboratory;

and then a secondary or mediate process, observation of books and of other, e.g., pictorial, descriptions of the original observations by others. Both of these forms of observation furnish material for note-taking.

Direct observation requires a habit of the continually sensitive and accurate use of the senseorgans; organs of movement-sensation, of hearing, of touch, smell, heat and cold, sometimes singly but sometimes, too, all at once.

Observation always should be explicit; in fact, unless it be explicit, it is not observation at all, but a form of "wool-gathering." In many cases it must be minutely explicit in order to be of any value. Further details often lend things a wholly new aspect, details which have not before been noticed, and thus lead sometimes to important discoveries. All of this process of observation involves a fine adjustment (by means of muscles and nerves and sometimes obvious glands) of the sense-organs. "Trifles make perfection but perfection is no trifle," and thus it is in this phase, the detailed phase, of observation.

On the other hand, observation must be also a process of observing things in their entirety and in their general relation to environment. We must

not always miss the ocean's grandeur for study, however scientific, of the waves upon the shore, any more than we ought to miss the beauty of a forest because of the crowded trees. There is chance for varied observation in street-cars and in trains! Travel supplies the material for much observation and also the stimulus to use this power. Observation exercises the mind, while the travel tones us up and rests our organism. In general terms, direct observation is incompatible with book-study because it almost inevitably distracts the interest therefrom. This is one of the difficulties of travel, as used to be the mode, in order to study; we forget to study, and this inconsistency is natural.

Another matter: this habit of minute adjustment of the senses involves a disregarding of whatever is already familiar, so that, in a way, for effective observation we have really to be familiar with whatever we suppose we are familiar with; which is to say we really have to mind our P's and Q's, for observation, as it develops, requires intelligence.

Interest is absolutely necessary. Observation depends on interest, and with interest the observation-process becomes "reflex" or automatic and therefore easy. A boy's interest in girls, for

example, and a girl's interest in the fashions are practical interests which uniformly, in normal boys and girls at least, lead to a process of observation, which thus goes on continually.

There is a great amount of labor required in observation. It is not a passive process, but on the other hand demands much effort, much bodily activity, the details of which are too technical for discussion in this sketch of the nature of observation. This process of sensory muscle-adaptation is called perception. A perception is an active reaction to some object around, and requires many fine muscular adjustments; indeed these are its physiologic

essence.

Sense-training of the simplest sort is one of the most important of all the elements of education, but for the most part only the feeble-minded children have the advantages of it! But no one, scarcely, is too old or too normal to develop at least a greater efficiency in this the very basis of intelligence. The elementary educational system is at fault to omit sense-training whatever else it might have to omit to give it room! Natural, spontaneous sense-training comes from natural interests, but it is only a fraction of what it might become by being trained. Few people yet realize

how utterly different things and events appear to different observers even under precisely the same objective conditions. Professor J. McKeen Cattell, of Columbia University, years ago made some striking demonstrations of this difference. A two-colored quadrangular card was exposed for a short time to a dozen or two intelligent persons singly, and when the drawings of what each "subject" saw were compared it was found that only two perceived the square red-and-green area alike, and these not exactly so, despite the mere chance of perceiving similarly. To quote the researcher's own words as given in the Proceedings of the American Psychological Association, 1899:

"When a moving surface is exhibited as it passes under a window in a screen it appears larger than the window. If green is exhibited first for second, followed by red for second, the observer does not see green followed by red, but the two colors are seen side by side, variously arranged and intermingled, filling a larger area than the window through which they are seen. A series of physical and physiological processes in time makes for perception a spatial continuum. In this case, however, the same physical stimulus gives rise to entirely different perceptions with different observers, indicating that the processes of visual perception are largely built up by the individual.

"When in the ordinary vision of daily life the line of