Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A philosophy or method of inquiry based on the premise that reality consists of objects and events as they are perceived or understood in human consciousness and not of anything independent of human consciousness.
  • noun A movement based on this, originated about 1905 by Edmund Husserl.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In Kantian terminology, a division of the metaphysics of nature which determines motion and rest merely in respect to the mode of representing them as phenomena of sense.
  • noun In Hegelian philosophy, the exposition of the evolution of knowledge.
  • noun A description or history of phenomena.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A description, history, or explanation of phenomena.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun philosophy A philosophy based on the intuitive experience of phenomena, and on the premise that reality consists of objects and events as consciously perceived by conscious beings.
  • noun philosophy A movement based on this, originated about 1905 by Edmund Husserl.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a philosophical doctrine proposed by Edmund Husserl based on the study of human experience in which considerations of objective reality are not taken into account

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Instead of using Helmholtz's terminology, Stumpf, as did most historians, preferred the term phenomenology to designate the study of phenomenal experience, which occupied center stage in the fields of physiology and psychology.

    On A Trans-Atlantic Flight 2009

  • A large branch of experimental fiction came about through modernism (and Woolf is an excellent example) that was interested in phenomenology, or how we perceive the material world.

    Reading Workshop I « Tales from the Reading Room 2010

  • Presenting simplified descriptions in terms of phenomenology is one thing, but presenting descriptions of something that you admit requires not only general relativity, but a theory of quantum gravity, in terms of classical mechanics should be a warning sign to most readers.

    “Black Holes – a Simplified Theory for Quantum Gravity Non-Specialists” 2009

  • Presenting simplified descriptions in terms of phenomenology is one thing, but presenting descriptions of something that you admit requires not only general relativity, but a theory of quantum gravity, in terms of classical mechanics should be a warning sign to most readers.

    Objections to Kaku and Liu’s “How to Time Travel?” 2009

  • Presenting simplified descriptions in terms of phenomenology is one thing, but presenting descriptions of something that you admit requires not only general relativity, but a theory of quantum gravity, in terms of classical mechanics should be a warning sign to most readers.

    Objections to Kaku and Liu’s “How to Time Travel?” 2009

  • Before Einstein, who asserted the radical inextricability of spacetime from the universe itself; and quantum physicists, who showed that there is no such thing as perfectly empty space; Romantic poets, with their figuration of atmosphere, and Romantic philosophers, with their interest in phenomenology, asserted the radical in-ness of reality.

    'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' as an Ambient Poem; a Study of a Dialectical Image; with Some Remarks on Coleridge and Wordsworth 2001

  • (Scalapino’s preface), taking instead as its project "elaborating problems in phenomenology but not in description" or placing emphasis "not on the thing seen but on the coming to see"

    Introduction 2003

  • What Stumpf calls phenomenology in his two Academy treatises of 1906 is a field of study to which he dedicated many works, from his early investigation on the origin of spatial perception up to his 1926 book on vowels and phonetics.

    On A Trans-Atlantic Flight 2009

  • This approach is known as phenomenology and was championed by a number of continental philosophers who argued that science will only ever give a partial explanation because objective measures always leave something of the 'lived experience' missing.

    Mind Hacks: Reframing mental illness 2005

  • This approach is known as phenomenology and was championed by a number of continental philosophers who argued that science will only ever give a partial explanation because objective measures always leave something of the 'lived experience' missing.

    Mind Hacks: September 2005 Archives 2005

Comments

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  • see: Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas

    December 6, 2006

  • Not forgetting Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. Also the fact that Hegel's 'Phenomenology of Spirit' uses the word, but not as part of the modern project of investigating structures of consciousness.

    October 23, 2007