Gendlin’s position against the “idealized observer” and Dewey’s position against the “spectator”: based on their views of old and new physics

Gendlin called the characteristics of living processes common to plants, animals, and humans a “non-Laplacian sequence.” So, what exactly is “Laplacian”? He critically examined an assumption implicit in classical physics from Newton to Laplace. This assumption implied determinism that scientists could perfectly predict the future. It also implied that when such scientists, called the “idealized observers,” observed natural phenomena, they pretended to be non-participants, even though they were participants.

Old and new physics

Gendlin wrote a paper on physics with its expert in 1983. In it, the modern quantum theory that has replaced classical physics was briefly described as follows:

In quantum theory ... the basic concept is that of interaction; and, we will argue, it is natural in quantum theories to regard location and time as derivative from interaction, and to distinguish actual interaction from mere comparison. (Gendlin & Lemke, 1983, p. 63)

In his later writings, he discusses the same point in the following way:

...in classical physics the space-time grid is the first condition; only then are momentum and acceleration added. In quantum mechanics we have stopped making the space-time grid the first condition. There the interactional event is put first, then the space-time relations are redefined retroactively forwards and backwards from the interaction. (Gendlin, 1991/1995, p. 164–6)

In terms of quantum mechanics, what the actual interactions are (re)generates the systems of space-time localization. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 264)

Hoeever, such a view of quantum theory as interaction did not begin with Gendlin. To understand the critical position against the "idealized observer" in his later work, it will be helpful to consider how the philosopher John Dewey, who preceded him, commented on old and new physics. Dewey criticized the determinism of classical physics from Newton to Laplace (*1), calling it “the old spectator theory of knowledge” (Dewey, 1929, p. 204 [LW 4, 163]), and examined how Heisenberg’s quantum theory replaced it:

The future and the past belong to the same completely determinate and fixed scheme. Observations, when correctly conducted, merely register this fixed state of changes according to laws of objects whose essential properties are fixed. The implications of the positions are expressed in Laplace’s well-known saying that were there a knowledge (in mechanical terms) of the state of the universe at any one time its whole future could be predicted—or deduced. It is this philosophy which Heisenberg’s principle has upset, a fact implied in calling it a principle of indetermincy. (Dewey, 1929, pp. 201–2 [LW 4, 161])

Principle of indeterminacy

How did Heisenberg upset the classical physics idea that “if observations are correctly conducted, the whole future of the universe could be predicted”? Let's look at how he contrasted his position with classical physics about 30 years after he proposed the principle of indeterminacy:

In classical physics science started from the belief—or should one say from the illusion?—that we could describe the world or at least parts of the world without any reference to ourselves. This is actually possible to a large extent. We know that the city of London exists whether we see it or not. It may be said that classical physics is just that idealization in which we can speak about parts of the world without any reference to ourselves. Its success has led to the general ideal of an objective description of the world. (Heisenberg, 1958, p. 55)

It is the quantum theory that casts doubt on this idealization of descriptions without any reference to the observers themselves:

The observation itself changes the probability function discontinuously.... Since through the observation our knowledge of the system has changed discontinuously, its mathematical representation also has undergone the discontinuous change and we speak of a 'quantum jump'. (Heisenberg, 1958, p. 54)

The act of observation itself by the observer causes unpredictable events to occur. Therefore, Heisenberg briefly summarizes as follows:

Classical physics can be considered as that idealization in which we speak about the world as entirely separated from ourselves. ... Quantum theory does not allow a completely objective description of nature. (Heisenberg, 1958, pp. 106–7)

Carrying on the idea of rejecting the conventional idealization, Dewey outlined the principle of indeterminacy as a realization of the non-spectator’s or interactive idea that “the act of observation itself affects the object being observed” (*2) as follows:

We should all, I suppose, recognize that when we perceive an object by means of touch, the contact introduces a slight modification in the thing touched. … in dealing with large bodies this change would be insignificant…. (Dewey, 1929, p. 203 [LW 4, 162])

But the situation changed when it [physics] came to dealing with minute bodies moving at high speed. Also, it became clear that a continuous field or even flow of light cannot be observed and measured. Light can be observed only as an individual object, a drop, pellet or bullet. The presence of at least one such bullet is required to make, say, an electron visible, and its action displaces to some extent the object observed; the displacement or jog, being involved in the observation, cannot be measured by it. (Dewey, 1929, pp. 203–4 [LW 4, 163])

The above can theoretically be stated as follows:

If we persist in the traditional conception, according to which the thing to be known is something which exists prior to and wholly apart from the act of knowing, then discovery of the fact that the act of observation, necessary in existential knowing, modifies that preexistent something, is proof that the act of knowing gets in its own way, frustrating its own intent. (Dewey, 1929, p. 205 [LW 4, 164])

From this point of view, the principle of indeterminacy seems like an intellectual catastrophe. In compelling surrender of the doctrine of exact and immutable laws describing the fixed antecedent properties of things, it seems to involve abandonment of the idea that the world is fundamentally intelligible. (Dewey, 1929, p. 208 [LW 4, 166])

Dewey then concluded in his review as follows:

The principle of indeterminacy thus presents itself as the final step in the dislodgment of the old spectator theory of knowledge. It marks the acknowledgment, within scientific procedure itself, of the fact that knowing is one kind of interaction which goes on within the world. (Dewey, 1929, pp. 204–5 [LW 4, 163–4])

In light of the previous statements that “The observation itself changes the probability function discontinuously” (Heisenberg), that “The act of observation, necessary in existential knowing, modifies that preexistent something,” and that “Knowing is one kind of interaction which goes on within the world” (Dewey), it is easy to understand Gendlin's arguments as follows:

Some interactions make some “mere” measurements impossible. (Gendlin, 1997c, p. 391; 2018, p. 261)

Only interactions, for example measurements that affect the process, are events in it. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 42)

Critical position against the “idealized observer”

Keeping in mind Dewey’s contrast between old and new physics, it will provide some background for Gendlin’s criticism since the ’80s that the “The space-time continuity of the observer in [classical] physics is abstracted from the continuity of living bodies.” (Gendlin et al., 1984, p. 260)

If there is no implying, if all events are only what they already are, then what connects events? It is conceived as a link between time and space provided by an "idealized observer." ... Empty space and empty time are assumed to consist of mere points that must wait for the observer to connect them. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 108)

Science presents the world as something observed, something external, consisting of percepts. But this depends on an idealized observer who supplies the connections. (Gendlin, 1997a, p. 14)

The usual conceptual model deprives everything of implying and meaning, not just living bodies. It constructs its objects in empty positional space and time, so that everything consists of information at space-time points. The space and the objects are presented before someone—who is not presented in the space. It is rather someone who connects the space and time points. The connections come to the points only externally; they are added by anonymous people called “the idealized observer.” (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 34)

Thus, it can be said that Dewey’s concept of the spectator (*3) was succeeded and critically examined by Gendlin’s concept of the idealized observer.

Concepts to think about what living bodies can do

Dewey and Gendlin’s review of the history of physics can further highlight Gendlin’s idea that to understand the living processes of plants, animals, and humans, we should not pretend that we, as observers, did not exist but should also be included in the consideration. Let us first follow Dewey's argument, then Gendlin's:

Mind is no longer a spectator beholding the world from without .... From knowing as an outside beholding to knowing as an active participant in the drama of an on-moving world is the historical transition whose record we have been following. (Dewey, 1929, p. 291 [LW 4, 232])

The human sciences study the observer and therefore cannot assume a constant and abstracted observer-continuity. We must see how this observer-continuity is generated. Then we can relate science's space and objects to other kinds of space and objects that also can be generated. (Gendlin et al., 1984, pp. 259–60)

In light of Dewey, we can also say that the roots of the argument in the later “A Process Model” (APM) become apparent. Let us first follow Dewey's argument, then Gendlin's:

The spectator theory of knowing may, humanly speaking, have been inevitable when thought was viewed as an exercise of a “reason” independent of the body, which by means of purely logical operations attained truth. It is an anachronism now that we ... are aware of the role of organic acts in all mental processes. (Dewey, 1929, p. 245 [LW 4, 195])

Shall we now study the observers (ourselves) by positing still another set of observers to connect us in their spectated space and time? Concepts that consist only of external positional relations are too poor to enable us to think about what living bodies can do, even plants and certainly animals, let alone ourselves. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, pp. 34–5)

“Perception” and “nature” from a non-idealized observer’s standpoint

The critical position against the “idealized observer” was discussed in the section “d-2) Some requirements for our further concept formation” in Chapter IV-A of APM as one of the basic ideas of the entire book. Of course, this idea seems to be reflected in the discussions elsewhere in this book. In connection with this idea, I would like to follow the discussions of “perception” in “(c-2) Had space-and-time” in Chapter VI-B and of “nature” in “(g-1) Relevance” in Chapter IV-A.

First, Dewey’s argument against the “spectator theory of knowing” (Dewey, 1929, p. 245 [LW 4, 195]) would correspond to Gendlin’s argument against dropping out of the bodily process of perceiving.

... we humans cannot find ourselves within the scientific picture, since it consists of presenteds. We seem to be only the perceivers-of or constructors-of the picture, as if we were outside the universe, the perceiver who does not appear in the percept. (Gendlin, 1992, p. 344)

The objects are there; we are dropped out of the universe. We are elevated to be its "constructors," disembodied, floating beside the universe. Within the universe presented by science we seem impossible. But we know something is wrong with this, since we are here. Let us see if we can think from here... (Gendlin, 1997a, p. 15)

The space and time of the old model are very limited. They cannot be accepted as an ultimate frame of reality. They are very abstract positional relations of comparison imposed by someone. Who? Obviously a perceiver, and not one who perceives-in-behavior, but rather a perceiver who only perceives and does only comparing, a spectator who has only an external relation to what is perceived. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 99)

The space of locations is a spectator’s space. It is perceived but then the bodily process of perceiving is dropped out, so that only the perceived things seem independently real. If that were so, there would also already be the space between them. But the process of perceiving is what is generating the perceptions! They are wrongly considered to exist by themselves. (Gendlin, fair copy, p. 1; 2013, p. 85; 2018, p. 151)

I think it was one of the essential themes in Gendlin’s philosophy to discuss generating perceptions without dropping out of the bodily process.

Next, the problem of thinking of perception from the standpoint of the idealized observer is also related to how we perceive “nature."

The doctrine that nature is inherently rational was a costly one. It entailed the idea that reason in man is an outside spectator of a rationality already complete in itself. (Dewey, 1929, p. 211)

Nature is not a machine. It is intricate and opens into all sorts of novelty. ... We can understand nature's kind of order from our own new sense-making, rather than by assuming a logical machine. (Gendlin, 1994, p. 390)

Why is nature only said to “obey” laws? … Does it not consist also of active interactions, including our activities? (Gendlin, 1997c, p. 406; 2018, p. 276)

… nature seemed to consist only of repetitious patterns in Euclid's geometric space. ... Therefore humans have no nature. This view still underlies current thinking. Mechanistic logic depends on fixed units. It is graph-paper. Machines are concretized graph paper. Nature was misunderstood as a machine. (Gendlin, 1997b, p. 248; 1997, November)

Looking back over two centuries from Kant and Hegel to the present, notice that nature, life processes, and animals were given over to mathematical mechanics, time and space units, graph paper, deterministic logical necessity, Laplacian uneventfulness. ... So convinced were thinkers that nature is graph paper. How odd! (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 37)

To read our formulations back as predetermining nature pretends that nature has the sort of order that our formulations have. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 48)

When we perceive nature, we are not passively copying the order of nature as separate from ourselves, but we are actively participating in the process of perceiving.

Conclusion

Succeeding Dewey, Gendlin further argued that predictable determinism could not explain the living processes. Furthermore, in light of Dewey, it became clear that unpredictability is not unrelated to our own participation in considering living processes or organic nature. The unpredictability, however, does not necessarily imply a lack of order. I will discuss the posterior order of living bodies in a separate post (Tanaka, 2024, June).

Note

*1) This kind of determinism is known today as “Laplace's Demon.” In the following text by Laplace, the equivalent of the demon is “intelligence”:

We ought ... to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its anterior state and as the cause of the one which is to follow. Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings who compose it—an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis—it would embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes. (Laplace, 1902, p. 4; cf. 1814/1840, p. 4)

*2) This blog post is written without doubting the content of Heisenberg and Dewey's writings. I would like the readers to understand that I am not a physicist, so I am not in a position to verify the validity of Dewey’s interpretation of Heisenberg or Heisenberg’s interpretation of quantum mechanics from the perspective of more advanced quantum mechanics today.

*3) The word “spectator” was used not only by Dewey’s work but also by Gendlin’s APM. For example, this word was used in Chapter I to describe en#1. However, the word “spectator,” used in Chapter I, including “hunter,” and the word “idealized observer,” used in Chapter IV to describe a scientist’s cognition, differ in denotation and do not always seem to refer to the same matters. On this point, valuable suggestions have been provided by Dr. Luke Jaaniste.

References

Dewey, J. (1929). The quest for certainty. Minton, Balch. Reprinted as Dewey, J. (1984). The later works, vol. 4 [Abbreviated as LW 4]. Southern Illinois University Press.

Gendlin, E. T. (1991). Thinking beyond patterns: body, language and situations. In B. den Ouden, & M. Moen (Eds.), The Presence of Feeling in Thought (pp. 21–151). Peter Lang.

Gendlin, E.T. (1991/1995). Ultimacy in Aristotle: in essence activity. In N. Georgopoulos & M. Heim (Eds.) Being human in the ultimate: studies in the thought of John M. Anderson (pp. 135–66). Rodopi.

Gendlin, E.T. (1992). The primacy of the body, not the primacy of perception. Man and World, 25(3-4), 341-53.

Gendlin, E.T. (1994). Response. Human Studies, 17(3), 381–400.

Gendlin, E.T. (1997a). How philosophy cannot appeal to experience, and how it can. In D.M. Levin (Ed.), Language beyond postmodernism: saying and thinking in Gendlin’s philosophy (pp. 3–41 & 343). Northwestern University Press.

Gendlin, E.T. (1997b). Reply to Hatab. In D.M. Levin (Ed.), Language beyond postmodernism: saying and thinking in Gendlin’s philosophy (pp. 246–51 & 366). Northwestern University Press.

Gendlin, E.T. (1997c). The responsive order: a new empiricism. Man and World, 30(3), 383–411.

Gendlin, E.T. (1997, November). On cultural crossing. Paper presented at the Conference on After Postmodernism, University of Chicago.

Gendlin, E. T. (1997/2018). A process model. Northwestern University Press.

Gendlin, E.T. (2013). The Derivation of Space. In Cruz-Pierre, A. and D.A. Landes (eds.) Exploring the work of Edward S. Casey: giving voice to place, memory, and imagination (pp. 85–95). Bloomsbury Academic.

Gendlin, E.T. (2018). Saying what we mean (edited by E.S. Casey & D.M. Schoeller). Northwestern University Press.

Gendlin, E.T. & J. Lemke (1983). A critique of relativity and localization. Mathematical Modelling, 4, 61-72.

Gendlin, E.T., Grindler, D. & McGuire, M. (1984). Imagery, body, and space in focusing. In A.A. Sheikh (Ed.), Imagination and healing (pp. 259–86). Baywood.

Tanaka, H. (2024, June). Gendlin’s position against the “unit model” or the “content paradigm”: retroactive time in terms of G. H. Mead’s theory of time.