Part 1. Subject-Object Reversal
When science investigates us as human beings, it describes our bodies and brains as seen from the outside. In this book we attempt to turn our perspective around. We will try to look through the other end of the current telescope of science, so to speak, in order to bring into focus who or what it is that is doing the looking, before buying into the landscape that is being looked at as the one and only way to ground the looker as a small piece of that landscape.
In the following six chapters, some specific experiments are sketched out that may be helpful in turning the telescope around. I have kept the instructions and suggestions deliberately simple, in order to focus on the essence of what it can mean to start with an investigation of the subject, as opposed to being bound by a strictly objectifying method.
In the studies of objects, Galileo had the right idea to start with very simple experiments, like rolling balls down inclined planes. Taking his example as an inspiration, I am describing a few ways in which we can experiment with letting objects take a subject role, and letting subjects take on an object role. If this may shake loose some of the tacit assumptions that are normally made about the structure of the world, the aim of these chapters has been accomplished.
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