Many concepts of scale are employed in science. Scale can be associated with theories and models, with measurements, observations, and data, and with objects and phenomena themselves. In this paper, I examine these latter concepts of scale, where scale is associated directly with phenomena rather than being understood in terms of the way phenomena are observed, described or investigated. While there are various ways of clarifying what it means to observe a phenomenon on a particular temporal or spatial scale, it is less clear what it means for a phenomenon to occur on one scale rather than another. Drawing on discussions of scale in ecology, I distinguish between a variety of attitudes toward scale in this ‘phenomenal’ sense, ranging from eliminitivism (which holds that scale should only be associated with observation, description and the like, and not with phenomena themselves) to realism (which holds that phenomenal scale should be understood independently of observation). I then assess the prospects for realist views of phenomenal scale.

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