“In the early eighteenth century, Britain sought to establish itself as the centre of a global knowledge network and, as part of its imperial ambitions, all of nature was subjected to scientific scrutiny and potential control. Swift’s protagonist Lemuel Gulliver recognises his potential as a broker of knowledge within numerous transnational, transcultural, and trans-species encounters, padding his empirical, observational prose with enumeration and comparison in order to convey information about supposedly faraway lands and peoples. Swift’s vignettes of interspecies or intercultural viewing ironise the colonial contact zone, revealing the partiality, contingency, and relative value of British and European scientific knowledge, and, ultimately, undermining notions of national or racial superiority upon which visions of empire rest. Gulliver’s Travels is itself a remarkable encounter, between literature and science, and the parameters of that engagement are partly defined by the colonial project, with the seemingly objective activity of observation implicated in imperial tyranny and exploitation. In scientific observation, Swift found a discursive mode around which he could structure an entire prose satire whilst also probing its intellectual and moral limits, placing the process of observation itself under satiric scrutiny.”

What kind of discourse was Freud’s psychoanalysis? A typical late-nineteenth-century positivist, Freud claimed that it is was a scientific, empirical psychology based on the always revisable observation of clinical data and distinguished it sharply from the a priori, meta-physical “speculations” of philosophy. Except that the ultimate object of psychoanalysis, the unconscious, is by definition beyond consciousness and therefore also beyond observation. So what distinguishes Freud’s psychoanalytic interpretations and “constructions” from philosophical speculations? In the end, what distinguishes his “metapsychology that leads behind consciousness” from a metaphysics? This is the question that this book attempts to answer by following Freud’s way of thinking, step by step and as closely as possible to the texts.

Visitors to resorts were enveloped in a new world that had the casino and its pleasures at its core. The novel forms that the institution assumed in the nineteenth century represent a change in the structure as a whole. The casino did important cultural work in the imaginations of nineteenth-century observers, recalling other social spaces, from the court to the church, and offered a contrast to other locations associated with nineteenth-century modernity. The architectural elements that were not directly related to gambling had the subsidiary purpose of keeping people within the physical confines of the building so that they would return to the gambling tables. Nineteenth-century casinos were anchored in attempts to generate and encourage certain forms of middle-class sociability. The casino produced an environment in which the emotions were unmoored, and new sensations attacked any previous emotional core that visitors possessed. Unlike other spaces that channeled emotion – the cathedral or the court – the nineteenth-century casino did so in the service of play, pleasure, and financial gain.

This chapter details the practical, theoretical, and philosophical aspects of experimental science. It discusses how one chooses a project, performs experiments, interprets the resulting data, makes inferences, and develops and tests theories. It then asks the question, "are our theories accurate representations of the natural world, that is, do they reflect reality?" Surprisingly, this is not an easy question to answer. Scientists assume so, but are they warranted in this assumption? Realists say "yes," but anti-realists argue that realism is simply a mental representation of the world as we perceive it, that is, metaphysical in nature. Regardless of one's sense of reality, the fact remains that science has been and continues to be of tremendous practical value. It would have to be a miracle if our knowledge and manipulation of the nature were not real. Even if they were, how do we know they are true in an absolute sense, not just relative to our own experience? This is a thorny philosophical question, the answer to which depends on the context in which it is asked. The take-home message for the practicing scientist is "never assume your results are true."

Violence and aggression remain common reasons for admission to psychiatric wards, and violence and aggression commonly occur in inpatient psychiatric units. Furthermore, exposure to violence and aggression has a deleterious impact on patient and staff safety, treatment outcomes, staff morale and performance, and on the therapeutic environment. The chapter begins with a discussion of clinical governance and of factors that contribute to violence. The importance of service user and carer involvement is emphasised, as is the need to create a safe and therapeutic ward environment. Sexual safety and comorbid substance misuse is mentioned. Principles of managing acutely disturbed behaviour and the prediction of violence in inpatient settings are summarised. Readers are also reminded of issues pertaining to observation, de-escalation, seclusion and restraint. The extra care area, therapeutic interventions, meaningful activity and the role of psychologists on acute wards to reduce the risk of violence and restricted practices are discussed. The chapter concludes with considerations regarding pursuing criminal proceedings against violent perpetrators and inpatient care in the context of COVID-19.

This chapter documents the widespread influence of experimental philosophy in eighteenth-century Germany. We first argue that Christian Wolff, the most influential German philosopher of the period, engaged at length with the methodological views of experimental philosophers and relied extensively on experience as the foundation of his own philosophy. However, his focus on developing a comprehensively deductive philosophical system ultimately overshadowed his commitment to basing philosophy on experiments and observations. We then show how the pair of experimental and speculative philosophy became enshrined in the structure of the Berlin Academy as a result of the rebranding of its disciplinary classes in 1746. Turning to the second half of the eighteenth century, we focus on the uptake of the methodological views of experimental philosophers in the literature on empirical psychology that flourished in the period; the reflections on the relation of experimental and speculative philosophy of Johann Nikolaus Tetens, a proponent of empirical psychology who influenced Immanuel Kant; and the contrasts between experimental and speculative methods in a range of works published toward the end of the century. As Kantian and post-Kantian philosophies rose in popularity, a priori reflection gained increasing acceptance and experimental philosophy went out of fashion.

This chapter discusses the historical origins and emergence of the distinction between experimental philosophy and speculative philosophy. It opens with a summary of certain disciplinary-specific shifts in the late Renaissance that led to an increased appreciation of the value of experiment and observation. It then turns to the crucial traditional distinction between speculative and practical knowledge, which can be traced all the way back to Aristotle and was central to medieval and Renaissance understandings of the disciplines. Traditionally, natural philosophy had been classed as a speculative science, but interesting new approaches can be found in Roger Bacon, in the practice of natural magic, and in mechanics. These developments paved the way for the emergence of Francis Bacon’s division of natural philosophy as having a speculative and a practical, or operative, side. Francis Bacon’s heirs were to embrace his emphasis on the role of experiment in the operative side of natural philosophy, and by the 1660s in England a new form of operative natural philosophy emerged that its practitioners and advocates called experimental philosophy. In many contexts, it was set against the older, speculative approach to natural philosophy.

Emotions and creativity are seemingly ubiquitous in our everyday lives. If so, why aren’t observational methods used to study them more frequently? This chapter first provides a brief history of observation science and differentiates between quantitative and naturalistic observations. Four observation challenges are outlined. Tips for planning, designing and implementing observation studies of creativity and emotions include clarifying definitions creativity and emotion that can be adequately operationalized for the purposes of observation, connecting the theoretical framework to the observation method of choice, developing observation protocols, clarifying the observer role and addressing validity, reliability and principles of generalizability and transferability. Observation protocols are described for studying theatrical performance (quantitative), creative engagement in science-based instruction (mixed methods) and empathy development in leaders’ creative problem solving using improvisational theatre (qualitative). The conclusion discusses the importance of the contribution of observation to the continued growth of the field of creativity studies and emotion research

This chapter focuses on E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India (1924) to explore Forster’s repeated, if sometimes reluctant, interest in modes of animality that threaten to unravel his humanism and complicate what critics, most notably Edward Said, have claimed to be his orientalising descriptions of the country and its people. It begins by looking at Forster’s depiction of beetles and wasps in the novel, examining how his later paratextual notes, added in 1942, undercut taxonomic precision. When placed in the context of the rise in popular entomology, Forster’s ‘unentomological’ approach to insects emerges as an important aesthetic feature of the novel. In part, it signals Forster’s hesitancy to impose western systems of knowledge on India, while it also differentiates his use of beastly language from writings by René Maran and Mulk Raj Anand. Bringing in intertextual material from Forster’s earlier novel Howards End (1910) and later account of visits to India, The Hill of Devi (1953), the chapter goes on to explore how he stages encounters with vaguely understood animal figures in which his anti-imperialism becomes, ironically, clearer.

Chapter 4 examines the codification of agricultural knowledge, the process through which practical knowledge was transformed into writing. Rather than asking whether this produced ‘useful’ knowledge to improve farming methods, it asks: for whom was such knowledge useful? It first identifies the construction of ‘agriculture’ as a literary category and an independent body of theory in the seventeenth century, departing from classical and medieval genres. The main section analyses four key modes of codification from 1669 to 1792: systematic, theoretical, experimental and observational. It argues that fundamentally all these modes of codification were shaped by the need to subordinate customary knowledge and labour and establish the supremacy of written knowledge. It further argues that the art of husbandry was codified in accordance with the cultural preferences and managerial interests of landowners, professionals and large farmers. Hence farming books provided a managerial knowledge suitable for the emerging occupational structures of agrarian capitalism.

This chapter examines skills developed by, and brought to play in, fieldwork. Progressing from generic skills used and refined through fieldwork, the discussion focuses on the geographical nature of skills used across all fieldwork activities, to the key geographical skills and tools that can be drawn upon to construct authentic fieldwork experiences for students. Fieldwork has always been an important facet of geography, helping to inform, validate, and consolidate the study of people and place. Fieldwork remains, to this day, rather simple and straightforward. It involves the gathering of primary data in the field. The ‘process’ of fieldwork occurs through the use and application of a wide variety of geographic and generic skills. The following discussion of fieldwork skills will examine the place of: • fieldwork skills in students wider learning, • fieldwork skills for thinking geographically, • specific geographic fieldwork skills, • geographic fieldwork tools and technology.

The Introduction delineates a shared set of concerns animating both artistic practices and scientific discourses at the turn of the nineteenth century, which were deeply invested in the human body’s ability to secure the relationship between reality and illusion, and between seeing and knowing. It first reevaluates historical accounts of the decline of neoclassicism and rise of Romanticism, and particularly the waning pictorial supremacy of the idealized nude body. It then lays out the importance of “popular science” and “Enlightenment empiricism” for the cultural landscape of eighteenth-century Britain and Continental Europe, revealing how the scientific authority of the human body was undergoing intense scrutiny. Recognizing such developments as interlocking rather than parallel enables us to think more critically about how artworks interrogated some of the visual and structural features of popular scientific discourses and, ultimately, the empirical framework that undergirded them.

Chapter 2 presents the three main research methods – observation, survey (interviews and questionnaires), and experiment. For each method, we outline a range of subtypes, including the consequences of various methodological decisions when methods have to be chosen in accordance with a specific research context. The chapter ends with short exercises which serve to gain experience with the different methods and recommendations for further reading.

Chapter Three, ‘At Camp’, explores how military camps produced new tensions as the men began to observe and interact with troops from other part of the empire and among the Allied forces. Colourful descriptions of the ‘Empire united in arms’ elided the asymmetries of power and inter-colonial competition at stake in the militarised setting.  The struggle to achieve status within an envisioned hierarchy of colonial races manifested in how the men wrote about those they met and how they represented themselves – in their uniform, fitness and soldierly bearing – in these spaces. Military sports days and leisure activities afforded new opportunities away from the battlefield to prove martial manliness, creating physical spectacles captured in official photography of the pageantry of the British Empire at war. The chapter thinks, too, about how these camp spaces encouraged curiosity about the new people the men were meeting and how they recounted moments of intimate and human connection that ran parallel to more antagonistic constructions of identity.

Elizabeth Bishop wrote with an awareness of developments in the visual arts at the beginning of the twentieth century, often seen as spearheading the Modernist movement in all the arts. As well as being a profoundly visual poet and sharing an interest in detailed description with her mentor Marianne Moore, Bishop also questioned the idea of a settled point of view and embraced both uncertainty and multiplicity in relation to seeing. Temperamentally she found an affinity with the idea of the Baroque in seventeenth-century writing and in the parallels with twentieth-century art drawn in art theory. Her early attraction to Surrealism also had to do with the disorientating effects of seeing and the uncertain boundary between inner and outer worlds. A writer who also painted herself, though in a small way, Bishop was always alert to issues of spatial representation, and how art and writing traced a similar process of their own emergence.

Sea of Cortez is part travelogue and part marine biology textbook that Steinbeck coauthored with his friend Ed Ricketts. This chapter examines Steinbeck’s interest in science, in species, and in the possibility of a shift in human consciousness offered by his encounter with Mexico. Placing Steinbeck’s book in the context of theories of the borderland and ideas of the Global South, together with his education in biology and “non-teleological thinking” gained from Ricketts, we uncover Steinbeck’s ecological vision that rejects progressive, goal-directed thinking. Sea of Cortez imagines an ideal of humanity, in harmony with its environment, found in moments of deep observation and passive description of other species. This descriptive method enables a complete understanding of other animals, an ecological sense of species interrelationship, and the possibility for new ways of being on the planet in the face of human extinction. The chapter ends by tracing Steinbeck’s understanding of Mexico’s indigenous population, which offers the potential of a holisitc, non-teleological existence, even as Steinbeck cannot fully transcend the barriers and prejudices of race.