Phenomenology and the life sciences: Clarifications and complementarities

This paper first clarifies phenomenology in ways essential to demonstrating its basic concern with Nature and its recognition of individual and cultural differences as well as commonalities. It furthermore clarifies phenomenological methodology in ways essential to understanding the methodology itself, its purpose, and its consequences. These clarifications show how phenomenology, by hewing to the dynamic realities of life itself and experiences of life itself, counters reductive thinking and “embodiments” of one kind and another. On the basis of these clarifications, the paper then turns to detailing conceptual complementarities between phenomenology and the life sciences, particularly highlighting studies in coordination dynamics. In doing so, it brings to light fundamental relationships such as those between mind and motion and between intrinsic dynamics and primal animation. It furthermore highlights the common concern with origins in both phenomenology and evolutionary biology: the history of how what is present is related to its inception in the past and to its transformations from past to present.