phenomenology

1. (philosophy) The study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view.Examples: "Writing, individuation, and civilization are all parts of one larger cultural phenomenology."; "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 studies which is to be followed by aetiology and theory. Among such phenomenologies Whewell mentions particularly phenomenological uranology, phenomenological geography of plants and animals, and even a phenomenological glossology."countableuncountable

2. (philosophy) A movement based on this, originated about 1905 by Edmund Husserl.Examples: "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."countableuncountable

3. (medicine, philosophy of medical sciences) 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.countableuncountable

4. (physics) The use of theoretical models to make predictions that can be tested through experiments.Examples: "He hopes [students] will "do the necessary phenomenology experiments and produce the necessary theory extensions" that will "turn over the present physics.""; "Particle phenomenology research includes perturbative QCD [quantum chromodynamics], physics beyond the Standard Model as well as heavy flavor physics."; "Well, it is in some sense the basic job description of a physicist to try to conceive of methods that make accessible natural phenomena that where hitherto out of reach, and to do so by devicing^([sic]) experiments. It is here that phenomenology comes into play by trying to work out models that can actually be tested by available data."countableuncountable