phenomenology

Noun

phenomenology (usually uncountable, plural phenomenologies)

1. (usually) The study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view.
   • Writing, individuation, and civilization are all parts of one larger cultural phenomenology.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 196
   • A similar and more influential use of the term can be found in William Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1847), where phenomenology occurs in the context of the "palaetiological sciences" (i.e., sciences which deal wih more ancient conditions of things), as that branch of these...1994, Herbert Spiegelberg, Karl Schuhmann, “Introduction”, in The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction, 3rd rev. and enlarged edition, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, →DOI...
2. (usually) A movement based on this, originated about 1905 by Edmund Husserl.
   • The process of questioning back displaces the emphasis in phenomenology from an inquiry into modes of givenness, which assumes that there can be a simple starting point, to an inquiry into modes of pregivenness.1995, Anthony J. Steinbock, Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology After Husserl, page 83
3. (usually) An approach to clinical practice which places undue reliance upon subjective criteria such as signs and symptoms, while ignoring objective etiologies in the formulation of diagnoses and in the compilation of a formal nosologies.
4. (usually) The translation of theory into measurable or observable predictions that can be used to experimentally test it.
   • He hopes [students] will "do the necessary phenomenology experiments and produce the necessary theory extensions" that will "turn over the present physics."c. 2000, “Zero Energy - Thomas Bearden”, in Alternative Energy, archived from the original on 28 Jan 2021
   • Particle phenomenology research includes perturbative QCD [quantum chromodynamics], physics beyond the Standard Model as well as heavy flavor physics.a. 2017, “Zhejiang University, China, Zhejiang Institute of Modern Physics”, in AcademicJobsOnline.org, retrieved 21 Jan 2021