Human Development
Experience
Description:
Experience refers to the body of knowledge possessed by an individual, based on the sum of his sensory impressions. There is philosophical disagreement as to the significance of experience to total knowledge. Idealist empiricists hold that experience is based not on objective reality but on subjective sensations and impressions (Berkeley, Hume); material empiricists assume that the source of all experience is the material world. In contrast, rationalists (Descartes, Leibniz) hold that experience provides confused knowledge and cannot be the basis of logical thought; and that the truth can be directly arrived at by reason without empirical or sensory cognition. Teilhard de Chardin points out that great changes are so slow as to be imperceptible in the experience of the individual, or even of mankind.Others have questioned the relevance of knowledge to experience, indicating that all the theoretical knowledge available is of little use unless one knows how to translate it into practice. Living out what one has learned, being open to what arises in life instead of trying to control from the inside what one desires to happen, has been posited (Ernest Kurtz) as the most sure way to developing as an individual.