ABSTRACT
Interesting examples of phenomenological analysis and observations on the relationship between the whole and the parts are to be found in Descartes, Malebranche and Condillac, and also in the English empiricists – their programmatic sensism and elementarism notwithstanding. From the 1880s onwards, numerous mainly German authors carried out experimental research in specific areas or conducted thorough revisions of their philosophical postulates, or worked on both of the tasks simultaneously. Phenomenology, according to Charles Sanders Peirce, “examines direct experience by combining the minutest accuracy with the most broad generalization” and it pits itself “against the reasoning according to which facts should be such and such”, because its task is the “simple and honest observation of appearance”. While Hering was constructing his phenomenological physiology, Franz Brentano published his book that would be so influential, in various ways, on twentieth-century culture: Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte.
