Phenomenology is an effort at improving our understanding of ourselves and our world by means of careful description of experience. On the surface, this seems like little more than naturalistic observation and introspection. Examined a little more closely, you can see that the basic assumptions are quite different from those of the mainstream experimentally-oriented human sciences: In doing phenomenology, we try to describe phenomena without reducing those phenomena to supposedly objective non-phenomena. Instead of appealing to objectivity for validation, we appeal instead to inter-subjective agreement (Gold, 25).
Phenomenology begins with phenomena -- appearances, that which we experience, that which is given -- and stays with them. It doesn't prejudge an experience as to its qualifications to be an experience. Instead, by taking up a phenomenological attitude, we ask the experience to tell us what it is.
Phenomenology also offers valuable insight into the physical, ecological, and energy dimensions of locality, community, and place. An ecological phenomenology of environment and landscape asks how people-in-places work experientially and behaviorally as ecological units (Gold, 24). A major concern is whether stability and rootedness in place promote a more efficient use of energy, space, and environment than today's predominant-place relationship emphasizing spatial mobility and the frequent disruption and destruction of unique places. An existential phenomenology of environment and landscape asks a complementary question: what are the existential advantages of place-bound life worlds? Do they, for example, facilitate in better measure than a physically dispersed life world such qualities as at-homeness, community participation, or care and concern for the environment? (Buttimer, Seamon, 168)
One significant dimension of the life world is the human experience of environment, which, in spite of criticism from non-phenomenologists continues to be a major focus of phenomenological work in environment research. In philosophy, Casey has written two book-length accounts that argue....
