‘All experiences are subjective’ (Bateson, 1979, 33) – yet they differ in mode. ‘In an observational mode one is detached from that which is the focus of attention; in a non-observational mode one is immersed in it’ (Gallagher and Marcel, in Gallagher and Shear 1999, 281). The mode of experience proper to scientific experimenting isolates the observer’s attention from her intentions. This practice only occurs within the intersubjective context of intentional consensus-building; but the intent to observe isolates attention temporarily even from that, since the process degenerates if the experimenter allows his preferences to interfere with his observations.
Immersion in the social context of science requires the very detachment from the Other, from the dialog partner, which is most inimical to communal practice generally, and to religious practice in particular. This is perhaps why someone who is known to be an acute observer of behavior tends to make people nervous (as Bennett Berger remarked, in his introduction to Goffman 1974).
The scientific method of isolating phenomena from the rest of the world (and especially from the investigator’s intent) is rarely of use in testing the more intimately guiding principles. For that we need a bigger science, a fuller empiricism that includes both participation and observation.