Phenomenology or phaneroscopy is a science. In their daily lives, people rarely practice phenomenology. But people who never heard the word may occasionally stop to think about what they see, how they see it, and why they interpreted it as they did. Those thoughts are the beginning of phenomenology. Artists, scientists, and detectives may dig deeper, but only as far as mecessary for their primary interests. In quotation #1 below, Peirce summarizes the three "faculties which we must endeavor to gather" for the practice of phenomenology: a) "The first and foremost is that rare faculty" of the artist: "the faculty of seeing what stares one in the face, just as it presents itself, unreplaced by any interpretation, unsophisticated by any allowance for this or for that supposed modifying circumstance." b) "we must strive to arm ourselves with is a resolute discrimination which fastens itself like a bulldog upon the particular feature that we are studying, follows it wherever it may lurk, and detects it beneath all its disguises." c) "The third faculty we shall need is the generalizing power of the mathematician who produces the abstract formula that comprehends the very essence of the feature under examination purified from all admixture of extraneous and irrelevant accompaniments." That "abstract formula" produced by the mathematician is the diagram. In quotation #2, he says "the geometer draws a diagram". He calls it a hypostatization: "Intuition is the regarding of the abstract in a concrete form, by the realistic hypostatization of relations; that is the one sole method of valuable thought." In quotation #3, he says that artists are better observers than scientists who limit their attention to "special minutiae". A detective who is looking for clues at a crime scene is searching for even more specialized minutiae. The differences are the result of their goals: an esthetic appreciation of patterns in nature, a general law that governs a certain kind of pattern, or the discovery of a specific pattern in a specific event. A phenomenologist requires talents of all three: discover specific patterns in specific events, formulate a hypothesis that explains them, and relate the "special minutiae" to a broad vision of the whole. But all those patterns or "hypostatizations of relations" can be represented as diagrams, and theyt must be evaluated by the normative sciences. especially methodeutic. . John ----------------------- 1. what we have to do, as students of phenomenology, is simply to open our mental eyes and look well at the phenomenon and say what are the characteristics that are never wanting in it, whether that phenomenon be something that outward experience forces upon our attention, or whether it be the wildest of dreams, or whether it be the most abstract and general of the conclusions of science. The faculties which we must endeavor to gather for this work are three. The first and foremost is that rare faculty, the faculty of seeing what stares one in the face, just as it presents itself, unreplaced by any interpretation, unsophisticated by any allowance for this or for that supposed modifying circumstance. This is the faculty of the artist who sees for example the apparent colors of nature as they appear... The second faculty we must strive to arm ourselves with is a resolute discrimination which fastens itself like a bulldog upon the particular feature that we are studying, follows it wherever it may lurk, and detects it beneath all its disguises. The third faculty we shall need is the generalizing power of the mathematician who produces the abstract formula that comprehends the very essence of the feature under examination purified from all admixture of extraneous and irrelevant accompaniments. (EP 2:147-148, 1903) 2. The work of the poet or novelist is not so utterly different from that of the scientific man. The artist introduces a fiction; but it is not an arbitrary one; it exhibits affinities to which the mind accords a certain approval in pronouncing them beautiful, which if it is not exactly the same as saying that the synthesis is true, is something of the same general kind. The geometer draws a diagram, which if not exactly a fiction, is at least a creation, and by means of observation of that diagram he is able to synthesize and show relations between elements which before seemed to have no necessary connection. The realities compel us to put some things into very close relation and others less so, in a highly complicated, and in the sense itself unintelligible manner; but it is the genius of the mind, that takes up all these hints of sense, adds immensely to them, makes them precise, and shows them in intelligible form in the intuitions of space and time. Intuition is the regarding of the abstract in a concrete form, by the realistic hypostatization of relations; that is the one sole method of valuable thought. (W 6:187, EP 1:261-262, 1887-88) 3. And let me tell the scientific men that the artists are much finer and more accurate observers than they are, except of the special minutiae that the scientific man is looking for. I hear you say: "This smacks too much of an anthropomorphic conception." I reply that every scientific explanation of a natural phenomenon is a hypothesis that there is something in nature to which the human reason is analogous; and that it really is so, all the successes of science in its applications to human convenience are witnesses. (EP 2:193, 1903)
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