Thinking in the Service of Understanding the World 31Chronologically, observation even precedes thinking.
For we can become aware of thinking, too, only through
observation. At the beginning of this chapter, when we
showed how thinking lights up in the face of an event and
goes beyond what it finds given without its assistance,
this was essentially the description of an observation. It
is through observation that we first become aware of any-
thing entering the circle of our experience. The content of
sensations, perceptions, views, feelings, acts of will,
dream and fantasy constructions, representations, con-
cepts and ideas, illusions and hallucinations—the content
of all of these is given to us throughobservation.
Thinking differs essentially, as an object of observa-
tion, from all other things. The observation of a table or
a tree occurs for me as soon as the objects enter the ho-
rizon of my experience. But I do not observe my thinking
about the objects at the same time as I observe them. I
observe the table, and I carry out my thinking about the
table, but I do not observe that thinking in the same mo-
ment as my observation of the table. If I want to observe,
along with the table, my thinking about the table, I must
first take up a standpoint outside my own activity. While
observation of objects and processes, and thinking about
them, are both everyday situations that fill my ongoing
life,the observation of thinking is a kind of exceptional
state. We must take this fact properly into account if we
are to determine the relationship of thinking to all other
contents of observation. We must be clear that, when we
observe thinking, we are applying to thinking a proce-
dure that is normal when we consider all the rest of our