The Fundamentals of a Phenomenological Theory of Earthquakes

Phenomenology is the unity of principles and methods employed for investigating the essence of things. The present paper is a brief review of the series of publications that these authors carried out over the past decade. The general thrust of these publications consists in the idea that phenomenological ideas of physics are used to analyze earthquakes. One conspicuous example of a phenomenological theory is thermodynamics. Maxwell’s electrodynamics is also a perfect example of a phenomenological theory. The phenomenology of earthquakes is still far from reaching that high level of excellence. A look at the rational knowledge of geodynamics shows that we have so far reached a preliminary stage where we are aware of the subject-matter, methods, and problems faced by the future phenomenological theory of earthquakes. Nevertheless, we already clearly see that our approach to the construction of such a theory has promise. We are using concrete examples to show that phenomenological concepts of general physics are helpful in the search for the principles of the theory, in the processing and analysis of concrete manifestations of seismicity.