Darwin’s Baby and Baby’s Darwin: Mutual Recognition in Observational Research

Abstract

Psychology has traditionally considered scientific objectivity to be enabled by the detachment and disembodiment of an observer at a distance. As an alternative, an embodied, relational stance of the observer to the observed provides understanding of mutual developmental processes not available through adhering to standard assumptions about objectivity. A textual analysis of Charles Darwin’s pronominal terms in the diary version of his observations on his oldest child, and in the published paper based on these observations, assessed the degree to which Darwin identified himself as detached observer or as embodied participant in these two texts. Results of the textual analysis indicated that, in the diary version, Darwin increasingly identified himself as embodied participant in interaction with his baby, in a manner coordinated with changes Darwin described in his baby’s recognition of himself and of Darwin. The embodied, relational vision which Darwin practiced as an observer of his child was not evident in the subsequently published scientific account. This paper demonstrates the value of textual analyses in elucidating possible disjunctions among a scientist’s observations, the mode of recording these observations, and the use the scientist makes of these recorded observations in texts written for scientific publication. Such analyses can aid in psychology’s examination of its assumptions concerning objectivity and subjectivity in science.

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