A new paper on empirical ontological phenomenology: "A Demonstration of the Transition from Ready-to-Hand to Unready-to-Hand".

The two experiments described below provide the beginning of an empirical basis for Heidegger's phenomenology: in particular, they demonstrate the correctness of his hypothesized transition from readiness-to-hand to unreadiness-to-hand. In order to investigate this transition, we constructed in the laboratory a situation involving equipment that participants are already familiar with.
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Heidegger's phenomenological philosophy would predict that prior to the perturbation, the participant in the experiment will smoothly cope with the tool as a ready-to-hand tool; during the perturbation, the mouse will become unready-to-hand and the participant will be forced to focus her attention and cognitive resources on the mouse and mouse-pointer coupling and, by necessity, away from a secondary cognitive task.

Perturbation is underappreciated as a formal research tool outside of engineering.  ¶ 11:35 AM