Talk:Phenomenon/Archives/2013

This is an archive of past discussions about Phenomenon. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Minor grammatical alteration

Hello Larry. I see you wrote the comments below after I did a minor grammatical alteration (I had nothing to do with the original article). (I just edited one of yours that was "completely shot through with error"; see "linear models".) (Did you have anything to do with "linear regression"? I rather drastically rewrote that one a few days ago.) -- Mike Hardy

I don't understand. I didn't write linear models or linear regression. I don't know much about either one of those topics, and would never think of doing any substantive edits to them.

Aha--I looked at the history. I moved Linear Model to linear model ages ago--the guy who had been writing zillions of statistics articles, in the early days, put them under capitalized page titles.

Nice try. :-) --Larry Sanger

Article should be deleted

I believe this article should be deleted, for the following reasons.

The first line is simply false in every claim it makes:

In philosophy, a Phenomenon is an observable event caused by a hypothetical object known as a noumenon.

No, in philosophy, there simply is no generally accepted use for 'phenomenon'. It's a technical term in Kant's philosophy, and it is used as a very vague term meaning roughly "appearance" or "object of perception"; sometimes it's pressed into service for more specialized (i.e., more clearly-defined) uses.

Noumena are detectable only if they cause phenomena.

This is just completely false as Kant scholarship. That wasn't Kant's view. There's also no philosopher that I know of who endorses this precise view in this precise language, that I know of.

The rest of the article is shot through and through with similar very basic mistakes. I'm boldly removing it, pending a discussion of the problems with it.

There's a basic error in writing articles like this: there is no general topic of study that goes under the name "phenomenon." The fact that this is a useful (though very vague and ambiguous) English word, that is used in a lot of theorizing, does not mean that there is a body of theorizing that is attached to it, that deserves an encyclopedia article. In fact, there isn't, as far as I can tell. Virtually all of the following should (and indeed already does) belong on pages like science, scientific method, and Immanuel Kant.

This isn't to deny that we need an article such as phenomenon (Kantian philosophy)--but that's a relatively well-defined piece of jargon that is the subject of a great deal of specific scholarship.

--Larry Sanger

Uses of "Phenomenon"

In philosophy, a Phenomenon is an observable event caused by a hypothetical object known as a noumenon. Noumena are detectable only if they cause phenomena.

Noumena and Phenomena provide a major part of the logical underpinnings of the scientific method and thus form the basis of science and engineering. Often technology exploits some phenomenon. It is possible to list the phenomena which are relevant to almost any field of endeavor, for example, in the case of optics and light one can list observable phenomena under the topic optical phenomenon.

The possibilities are many, for example:

Some observable events are commonplace, some require delicate manipulation of expensive and sensitive equipment. Some are significant experiments which led to groundbreaking discoveries.

There is a class of phenomena which lie outside generally accepted knowledge which knowledgable scientists tend to discount. They are collected and discussed under the topic anomalous phenomena.

Missing content?

The idea of an "intersubjective object" or of "intersubjective phenomena" is central to a discussion of modern science. Am I missing something or is there no article on this important topic? P0M 20:12, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Pasted from article

"lightening" should be changed to "lightning" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.165.45.58 (talk) , message pasted from article -- Longhair 06:43, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

General use

I moved most of the list-ish content in this section to the disambiguation page. - Sam 21:16, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Suggested correction

In my opinion this article should remain, like the correponding article "Noumenon".

There is however a subtle error in the opening definition line. It should read "is an observed event " and likewise "something that is seen"...

Explanation : something that can be observed is an idea (Noumenon), only something that is observed can be called a Phenomenon. See Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book I, Chapter 13, 'What is thought (noumena) is opposed to what appears or is perceived (phenomena)', from Schopenhauer's critique in article "Noumenon". Ref. (Brittanica)[1] and [2]

I post it here first. It is my first contribution.

Alex Mulder Xndrmldr 14:55, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Today i applied the change in the text.Xndrmldr 14:36, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Merged...now the fun begins!

Okay, I've merged Phenomena (philosophy) and Phenomenon (science) to here. I reckon this article could be made really great imo. I'll do my best to improve it, but it's about finding the time, you know? Deamon138 (talk) 00:49, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Social or Group Phenomena

{Category:Group processes}, as a category tag, includes the category "Phenomenon", and so I would like to include a section on "Group phenomena" so as to make the page match the tag. I'd also like to alter the definition of phenomena a little, so as to address the "Maple syrup event". (Don't laugh, it's a "keystone" event in social progress, trust me. Check the Mse discussion page for why I see it this way.) So I need to fit all these people, in a socially- and technologically-mediated event, inside "phenomenon", in order for the tag to work. If there are any objections, I will be watching for them, and negotiate a solution, per the usual Good Faith. Thanks. --TheLastWordSword (talk) 18:54, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

missing explanation

If this article has to do with philosophy, where is the discussion of the phrase "save the phenomena"? 4.248.223.50 (talk) 14:29, 12 December 2011 (UTC)