Phenomenological Methodology in Sonic Research

By phenomenology, we mean the philosophical school founded at the beginning of the twentieth century by Edmund Husserl and further developed by Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and many others up to the present day. In this book, our aim is not to present elaborate and detailed phenomenological investigations; we are simply concerned with the application of phenomenology to the description of sonic environments. Indeed, as we intend to show and justify in this section, the methodological procedures and outcomes of phenomenological investigations offer valuable tools for describing sonic environments. What, then, are these tools offered by the phenomenological method? After a brief introduction to phenomenology, we will list and explain them.