In a much cited paper, Bogen and Woodward (1988)
introduce the distinction between data and phenomena. Spelling out this distinction,
they aim to circumvent the issue of theory-ladenness of observation. Phenomena
are facts or events in nature. While Bogen and Woodward conceive of phenomena
as nature kinds, I argue that what we take a phenomenon to be changes in the
course of our examination of it. The model that is gradually constructed to
describe the phenomenon also serves to specify and identify the phenomenon.
What a phenomenon is depends very much on how we have come to model
it.