Edmund Husserl

From: http://www.husserl.net/husserl/HusserlIntro.html

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) was a philosopher best known for launching phenomenology, the philosophical study of consciousness. Phenomenology studies the world as it is given to or “constituted by” consciousness. One can speak of the phenomenology of reading, of dancing, of mathematical investigation, of chess-playing, and so forth, in each case meaning an analysis or description of how that activity is experienced by the person engaging in it (for example, the first-person experience of dancing or playing chess). One can also study objects (construed widely to include not just physical objects like tables and chairs but also abstract objects like numbers and values) in terms of the way they appear to consciousness. Husserl's philosophy was notoriously complex. Among other things, Husserl sought to ground all claims to knowledge in claims about consciousness, to introduce a methodology for studying consciousness, to relate existing disciplines (mathematics, logic, epistemology, psychology, natural science, etc) to phenomenology, etc.