phenomenon
Pluralphenomena, phenomenon
- 1A fact, event, or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or nature is in question or that can be studied.
Migration is a biological phenomenon seen in many animal species.
Tides and currents are oceanic phenomena governed by the same forces.
UsageThe plural is phenomena: a phenomenon, these phenomena (not
incorrect: a phenomena). - 2A person, thing, or event regarded as remarkable, extraordinary, or astonishing.
The tiny cafe turned into a local phenomenon, with lines around the block every weekend.
At only fourteen, the chess player was hailed as a phenomenon by the world's grandmasters.
UsageCommon phrases include a local phenomenon, a global phenomenon, and a pop culture phenomenon.
- 3An experienced object whose form reflects the order and structure the human mind imposes on it through perception and understanding.
Kant argued that every phenomenon is partly structured by the mind that perceives it.
Phenomena, on this view, are never raw reality but reality filtered through human understanding.
Similarappearance
Oppositenoumenon
Note
Kant's technical use turns the everyday word inward: the thing as the mind has already shaped it, ordered by the forms of intuition and the categories of understanding. Its counterpart is the thing-in-itself, which lies beyond any possible experience. Roy Wood Sellars put it in 1912: the Kantian phenomenon is "the real as we are compelled to think it."
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 5 facts
- Kant treats phenomena as objects whose experienced form depends on the mind’s forms of intuition. gutenberg.org
- Kant’s categories of understanding structure experienced objects. gutenberg.org
- Kant contrasts phenomena with things in themselves, which cannot be experienced as they are in themselves. gutenberg.org
- Roy Wood Sellars’s article containing the quotation was published in 1912. jstor.org
- Sellars wrote the quoted words about the Kantian phenomenon. en.wiktionary.org
Practice
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Origin
Ancient Greek phainómenon, a "thing appearing to view," was a participle of phaínō ("I show"). It passed into Late Latin as phaenomenon ("appearance") and from there into English.