Dark Star (1974): Phenomenology and Thermosteller Nuclear Bomb #20.​

”Phenomenological science is in fact more like what has been called art, or even theology, in its emphases on conversion, attention, and revelation. Where science attacks, phenomenology brings forth; where science uses a hammer, phenomenology incorporates a lens”(The Art of Phenomenology and its Implications for the Study of Religion, James Mark Shields ©1994,revised 2008 ).

The short video from the movie "Dark Star" will lay down the beginning epistemological questions and arguments that phenomenology attempts to address.

Heidegger begins his examination of the question of Being using a method that Husserl founded called “phenomenology.” Heidegger was a student of Husserl and took certain concepts of phenomenology and applied them to his interest in the concept of “to be.” Heidegger utilizes the phenomenological descriptive method which describes and uncovers the essential structure of any examined phenomena. The phenomenological method seeks to dispense with pre-constituted meanings; we can reveal the genesis of all meaning structures. The phenomenological conceptual tools provided by Husserl are the Epoché (ἐποχή, epokhē ), and is understood as “the act of suspending judgment about the natural world that precedes phenomenological analysis.” Husserl used the word “intuition” to mean what is immediately present, comprehensible to sense perception, our memories, and our imaginations. Whenever we perceive the world, our first experience is that of our own ideas. Husserlian phenomenology sought to systematize essences, logical forms, and explicate the intersubjective totality of meanings that members of a culture share. Epoche is also called “bracketing” meaning whatever is between these brackets [...] will only be described and the analyst will not get distracted by attempting to explain whether the phenomenon selected for description is “real,” or “imagined. The phenomenological analyst is only interested in describing our conscious experience.

The other tool of analysis Husserl provides is the method of Eidetic reduction to vary the possibilities of appearance of any kind to derive essences and therefore their clear meanings. Eidetic is from Greek, εἶδος, (eidos), that which is seen, form, shape, figure.​ . This is a fancy term that means the phenomenological analysts strips away (reduces) all the accidental attributes of an phenomena and leaves only the necessary elements which is called, “essences.” We do this all the time when we make dictionary definitions. So epoche and eidetic reduction are analytical tools for Husserl and borrowed by Heidegger in his philosophical studies.

A particular form of being is “ontic” and these are the everyday objects of experience and scientific investigation. However, any object can be questioned of its meaning as a form of being. This aspect of beings is “ontological.” Dasein [for our purpose human-beingness] has the ontic characteristic to be ontological—this means, it is a historical fact of human beings that they are able to question the meaning of their own existence. Heidegger uses Husserl’s tool of Eidetic reduction to distinguish things (beings) and conscious human being.  An inquiry into entities is “ontic,” but an investigation of Being is “ontological.” Here the term “being” will be used to refer to the existence of entities, things. “Being” will be used to refer to human existence, or the ontological.

Phenomenology is the science of φαινόμενον, phenomenon, meaning, (photon), bring to light, make to appear, to show. Anything that shows or shines is a phenomenon. Heidegger makes the phenomenological distinction between mere appearing and appearance. Schein, means, semblence, “outward or surface appearance,” or misleading appearance--as it is not. On the other hand, Erscheinung means the way in which the thing appears, but is also a mark, or sign of what a thing is. The example used is a “symptom.” Red spots appear on the skin, but they signify something else, a fever. So the spots are Erscheinung of the fever. It is the thing that appears, but not what is meant. Phenomenon is what shows itself as itself. Neither semblence nor sign are possible without something appearing so phenomenon underlies all appearances.

If phenomenon shows itself as itself then why is a phenomenological method needed in the first place? Heidegger makes a change in the definition of phenomenon: it is that which can show itself. This is a major shift away from Husserl in the use of phenomenology as a method and not “an a priori science of mind as the foundation for scientific philosophy” that Husserl was trying to establish. Heidegger rejects the label, “existentialist,” and embraces the label, “Phenomenologist.”

"Heidegger does not base his philosophy on consciousness as Husserl did. For Heidegger the phenomenological or theoretical attitude of consciousness, which Husserl makes the core of his doctrine, is only one possible mode of what is even more fundamental, namely, Dasein’s being. Although he agrees with Husserl that the transcendental constitution of the world cannot be unveiled by naturalistic or physical explanations, in his view it is not a descriptive analysis of consciousness that leads to this end, but the analysis of Dasein [for our purpose Dasein means human-beingness]. Phenomenology for him is not a descriptive, detached analysis of consciousness. It is a method of access to being. For the Heidegger of Being and Time, philosophy is phenomenological ontology which takes its departure from the analysis of Dasein. Philosophy as Phenomenological Ontology "

This is how it goes: the subject is reduced to an essence which means we are not concerned about any particular accidental characteristic of a individual human being like age, ethnicity, gender. No, the essence of human being is “being-there” and more particularly “being-in-the-world” as a portal to Being. Wikipedia reads as the following:

"[Heidegger’s] first and best-known book, Being and Time (1927), though unfinished, is one of the central philosophical works of the 20th century.^[14] In its first division, Heidegger attempted to turn away from "ontic" questions about beings to ontological questions about Being, and recover the most fundamental philosophical question: the question of Being, of what it means for something to be. Heidegger approached the question through an inquiry into the being that has an understanding of Being, and asks the question about it, namely, Human being, which he called Dasein ("being-there"). Heidegger argued that Dasein is defined by Care, its practically engaged and concernful mode of being-in-the-world, in opposition to Rationalist thinkers like René Descartes who located the essence of man in our thinking abilities."

Thermostellar Device #20 discovered that misinterpretation could have disastrous consequences. Dolittle either intentionally or by accident taught Device #20 absolute skepticism (denial of the possibility of knowledge) instead of Cartesian doubt, which is strictly methodological doubt. When Descartes poses a question like “How do you know the world exists?” (Husserl spends a lot of time studying Descartes). Descartes really doesn’t doubt the existence of the world; he just wants to build a hierarchical foundation for all knowledge based on an irrefutable proposition like, “I think; Therefore, I am.” There would have been no reason to not explode if Device #20 only knew methodological doubt as a tool, or Device #20 would not have doubted his instructions from the ship and aborted the detonation sequence. Either way, when Device #20 re-emerged, it had become an authentic entity whose purpose is to actualize its full potential.  

So be on the lookout for different interpretations of phenomenology from Husserl, Heidegger, John Paul Sartre...and people like me that favor Heidegger’s interpretation...this is the direction I want to go.