Observer

A human observer is a person who engages in observation or watches something.

Human subjects observe themselves, each other and the world around them.

The act of observation enables us to develop our understanding and engage with the world.
When an observer sees something they are engaging in visual perception.
An observer can take many forms:
- A person watching an ocean sunset or the sky at night.
- A person studying their baby’s face.
- A person studying something they can’t see by collecting data from an instrument or machine.
- A person conducting an experiment in a laboratory.
In everyday life, an observer feels themselves to be involved in the things they observe.
A scientific observer is someone who causes no unnecessary changes to the object of their observations.

Our eyes are sensitive to light as a result of the stimulation of photoreceptors embedded within the retinas of our eyes.
In the presence of light, an observer perceives colour.
The visual experience of colour by an observer is associated with words such as red, blue, yellow, etc.
Things appear coloured to an observer because colour corresponds with a property of light that is visible to the human eye.

The perception of colour is a very subjective experience.
Factors that determine the particular colour an observer sees include:
- The environment in which colours are observed, the type of object and colour associations.
- The colour of nearby objects.
- The well-being of an observer. Health, medications, mood, emotions or fatigue can all affect the eye, vision and perception.
Different observers may see colour differently because of life experience including educational, social and cultural factors.
The term observer has distinct and different meanings within the fields of special relativity, general relativity, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and information theory.

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