Dear Nathaniel,

Thank you for asking this very stimulating question. My provisional answer is: Phenomenology is a 20th Century Buzzword invented in the attempt to bridge the conceptual chasm between mind (Geist - Hegel et al.) and matter (Stoff - Mach et al.) left behind by Kant's plagiarism of St. Paul's "For now we see through a glass - darkly") when Kant pretentiously and unintelligibly claimed to have discovered a "Kritik der reinen Vernunft" - (Critique of Pure Reason) with which he presumed to reconcile our experiences of mind and matter.

The wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(philosophy) is worth your reading, if you're interested.  I find it very informative although at its end it can't avoid getting bogged down in the Scholasticism which is the fate of all attempts to understand ourselves and our world, when these attempts are not tethered to and subject to immediate confirmation by what one can see, and hear, and smell and, above all, touch.

Love, Jochen