Observation

Observation is the deliberate act of noting what happens, by eye or by instrument, that supplies the raw material every other concept on this atlas works on: a hypothesis has nothing to predict against, and a theory nothing to be tested by, without it. It is the oldest and least formalised of this atlas's concept entries, no single person or year credited with proposing it, but it is not the simple, theory-free foundation it is sometimes taken to be; what counts as a relevant observation, and how a given reading is described, is already shaped by the observer's existing assumptions, the complication this atlas's own theory-ladenness entry addresses directly.