Phenomenology (science)

Phenomenology (Greek phainomenon " Visible, appearance"; logos " speech doctrine " ) is a methodology of science, it is the description and classification of phenomena ( phenomena ) in nature and society. The operation is characteristic of a descriptive science.

Phenomenology in science

As science is in itself a doctrine of phenomena and their interrelationships, called phenomenology a methodology that defines the descriptive aspects of science against the experimental and theoretical methods. It thus forms the basic prerequisite for the paradigm of consistency to the observable as the only legitimate underlying concept of truth of modern science. To distinguish nomothetic versus idiographic see also research.

Phenomenological disciplines of descriptive or descriptive or traditional in German with additions such as - customer with chromatography, (Greek γραφειν " writing, drawing " ) provided: For instance, the geography ( geography ) - in the original sense - the purely descriptive discipline of Earth Sciences, or the writing of history documenting the story itself in the context of historical science.

Phenomenological approach

The scientific phenomenology includes the following areas:

• Morphology, the study of the shape and appearance of objects
• Chorology, the doctrine of space and the spatial association and the spatial reference
• Chronology, the doctrine of the time, the time allocation and the processes
• Taxonomy, the systematic order of facts

The "first look " on the empirical data material for a research project, the first phase of a systematic scientific work ( fabric collection ) is often referred to as phenomenology. " Phenomenological " features here mostly the facts to describe the thing itself. Thus, a test procedure is described as possible without the aid of theories, animal behavior just described, not interpreted in terms of human understanding, only seen what happens. Part of the phenomenological work is the description of an experiment and the experimental logging, ie the description of the measurement results and the conditions under which they were achieved.

With this component you then goes into theoretical science, in which one tries to fathom mechanisms and cause- effect relationships, or where these are still inaccessible or too complex to establish statistical relationships. Thus one can go to a modeling, and in many branches of knowledge - both nature and spirit, and also structural sciences - then result in the forecast (forecast) again phenomenologically oriented applications.

Phenomenological attitude in special sciences

Examples of phenomenological sub-disciplines

• Astronomical phenomena, the study of the celestial phenomena, whatever their Compared to other natural sciences enormously different origins
• Synoptic Meteorology, presentation of weather forecasts, including
• Phenology, weather climatology of effectiveness through the development phenomena in nature
• Phenomenological sociology, observational theory of action
• Phenomenology of religion, a very descriptive approach of religious studies

An example from the theory of superconductivity

As a phenomenological theories ( in contrast to microscopic or atomistic theories ) such theories are called in physics, which only error-free describe the phenomena together with their consequences without explaining its causes. A good example is the Ginzburg- Landau theory of superconductivity. This theory was in 1950 already set up correctly. However, the microscopic origin of superconductivity remained open: the carriers of superconductivity the indefinite electric charge q is initially assigned the value of which could not be specified. Only the microscopic BCS theory explained in 1957 that it is not about new particles, but weakly bound pairs of ordinary electrons called Cooper pairs, acts, and that, consequently, q = 2e, where e is the electron charge.

The fame of the theoretical understanding of superconductivity does not have the phenomenological Ginzburg- Landau theory, but the microscopic BCS theory harvested, since the former can be derived from the latter.

Regarding the term consequences this can be also viewed as a conceptual extension of phenomenology.

Therapeutic theories

In humanistic and therapeutic theories, Gestalt therapy, talk therapy or logotherapy, the phenomenology is often as an epistemological tool in the foreground. Even in modern psychoanalysis there is a decided turn to a phenomenological approach. In particular, this is observed in the relational and intersubjective psychoanalysis. In addition to the philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Buber also phenomenologists such as are Emmanuel Levinas called. Common to all theories is the caution with respect to faster interpretation, theories do not want to absolutise, but to always stay connected to the concrete experience of the everyday, as well as to respect the autonomy of the experience of others.