What makes an observer modern; Jiwon Shin
The modern concept of an observer is quite distinct to that of the eighteenth century. During the eighteenth century, the camera obscura had become the key representation of how an observer perceives an image in front of them, as the functions of the camera obscura was thought to have closely replicated the workings of the human eye. However, this greatly changed with the advancement of human discovery of the workings of the human body. First, with Goethe's closing of the aperture of the camera obscura, the idea that perception was inseparable from the workings of the mind and experiences of the observer. As Schopenhauer says that the resulting image that we see through our eye is "the consciousness of a picture or image at that very spot"(as quoted by Crary, 77), the objectivity is lost when a human observer perceives and processes the image in their brain to interpret what they are perceiving.
The definition of an observer changes further with the discovery of the distinction between the voluntary "cerebral" activities and involuntary "excito-motor" activities of the human body by the British physician Marshall Hall (Crary, 82). From this discovery, it was made possible for the modernist thinkers to think of the ideal 'objective' perception. Based on the discovery that there are two types in which the human body can react to the external impulses, the objective perception could be plausible. Thus, idealistically, a modern observer can perceive objectively as their perception can be controlled and tamed for them to eradicate the workings of their mind.
Another scientific breakthrough that completely moved the concept of an observer away from the workings of the camera obscura was Muller's theory the possibility of how an observer can be stimulated to see "light" regardless of whether or not there was an actual external source of light (Crary, 90). This eradicates the distinction between the interior and exterior of the camera obscura. Thus a modern observer has no distinction between what they see as a product of an impulse of the involuntary activity and what the mind fabricates for the observer to see through what is in front of them. Thus, taking it a step further, for a modern observer, human perception os subjective and thus creates distinct knowledge of the viewed subject.
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