to the things themselves, n.All

To the things themselves is a call not to to make things the center of analysis, but to focus on the 'to the, 'that is, the towardness inherent in all dealings with things.

To the things themselves is a summary of the methodological assumption of phenomenology... namely, that to do philosophy, you need only to pay extremely careful attention to what's really going on when you experienced real things when they present themselves to you in your experience.

To the things themselves is call for a mode of inquiry that sees the pervading scientific obsession with representation and cause/ effect as important if also limited to only a small slice of our interactions with and in the the world. A scientific worldview is limited much as geography is limited in relation to the countryside in which we have learnt first what a forest, a prairie, or a river is. As opposed to explanation or analysis of how things came to be or how they work, this is a call for a science of description of

To the things themselves is, from the start, a disavowal of science. I am not the result or the intersection of numerous causal agencies which determine my bodily or psychological makeup.

To the things themselves is to return to that world which precedes knowledge, of which knowledge always speaks, and in relation to which scientific determination is abstract, and as insignificant to it as geography is to the country-side in which we have learnt first what a forest, a prairie, or a river is.