The founder of phenomenology, German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) studied the mind itself, not the outside world of things and events that the mind perceives. Consciousness is properly studied through the mind, according to Husserl. He called this phenomenological reduction. The mind can think of things that do not exist, so this philosophy is similar to Idealism and Immaterialism. He called this the bracketing of existence, leaving the reality or unreality of things out of the equation.

He defined the essence of consciousness to be what he called intentionality. The thought and the thing are inextricably linked. You cannot think without thinking about something. There are absolutes in the mind that he called meanings, and assigning a meaning to a thing was directed intentionality. This is similar to the theory in New Physics that the experimenter cannot help but affect the result of the experiment.

Thinking and rethinking about things in your mind, describing them to yourself, and looking at them in different ways is an aspect of creativity. Phenomenology as a philosophy has influenced many in the creative pursuits of art and literature. Phenomenology also shows us how much our perceptions influence our worldview. Perception is reality, as it were.