The word phenomenology entered the English language around the turn of the 18th century. Johann Heinrich Lambert used the term in philosophical texts between 1728 and 1777 before Edmund Husserl claimed it as his own.
Phenomenology derives from the Greek phainómenon meaning that which appears and lógos denoting study. The historical trajectory shows how a broad descriptive label evolved into a specific methodological commitment through contributions by Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel, Carl Stumpf, Franz Brentano, and Ernst Mach.
In Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology published in 1913, Edmund Husserl presented phenomenology as transcendental idealism. This work introduced procedures such as epoché which suspends commonsense assumptions about reality known as the natural attitude.
Martin Heidegger modified Husserl's conception due to perceived subjectivist tendencies within the original framework. He introduced Dasein as a technical term representing existence rather than consciousness states and replaced intentionality with comportment presented as more primitive than conceptually structured acts.
Scholars have differentiated phenomenology into seven distinct types including Transcendental constitutive phenomenology, Naturalistic constitutive phenomenology, Generative historicist phenomenology, Genetic phenomenology, Hermeneutic phenomenology, Existential phenomenology, and Realist phenomenology. Additional recognized varieties include Early-Heideggerian transcendental hermeneutic phenomenology and Late-Heideggerian destructive phenomenology.