Experience as a general concept comprises knowledge of or skill of some thing or some event gained through involvement in or exposure to that thing or event. The history of the word experience aligns it closely with the concept of experiment. For example, the word experience could be used in a statement like: "I have experience in fishing".
The concept of experience generally refers to know-how or procedural knowledge, rather than propositional knowledge: on-the-job training rather than book-learning. Philosophers dub knowledge based on experience "empirical knowledge" or "a posteriori knowledge".
The interrogation of experience has a long tradition in continental philosophy. Experience plays an important role in the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard. The German term Erfahrung, often translated into English as "experience", has a slightly different implication, connoting the coherency of life's experiences.
A person with considerable experience in a specific field can gain a reputation as an expert.
Certain religious traditions (such as types of Buddhism, Surat Shabd Yoga, mysticism and Pentecostalism) and educational paradigms with, for example, the conditioning of military recruit-training (also known as "boot camps"), stress the experiential nature of human epistemology. This stands in contrast to alternatives: traditions of dogma, logic or reasoning. Participants in activities such as tourism, extreme sports and recreational drug-use also tend to stress the importance of experience.
Read more about Experience: Types of Experience, Contexts of Experience, Changes in Experience Through History, Alternatives To Experience, Writing, Art
Other articles related to "experience":
... In Ancient Rome it was believed that personal experience was part of some divine or species-wide collective experience ... such notions, than a strictly personal idea of experience ... investigators of these ideas of collective experience in the 20th century ...
... Able to offer appropriate command experience on fixed-wing aircraft or helicopters ... Engineering degree and/or be a Chartered Engineer with a minimum of 5 years' post qualifications experience ... Knowledge and experience of modern aircraft control systems ...
... that ironically took up the implications of the term "experience" Experience the Experience ...
... Work experience is the experience that a person has been working, or worked in a specific field or occupation ...
... being of the person, distinct but not separate from all contents of experience ... Psychosynthesis suggests that 'we can experience the will as having four stages ... and out of awareness the contents come and go, while “I” may remain present to each experience as it arises ...
Famous quotes containing the word experience:
“One of the most difficult aspects of being a parent during the middle years is feeling powerless to protect our children from hurt. However “growthful” it may be for them to experience failure, disappointment and rejection, it is nearly impossible to maintain an intellectual perspective when our sobbing child or rageful child comes in to us for help. . . . We can’t turn the hurt around by kissing the sore spot to make it better. We are no longer the all-powerful parent.”
—Ruth Davidson Bell (20th century)
“When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“Christianity only hopes. It has hung its harp on the willows, and cannot sing a song in a strange land. It has dreamed a sad dream, and does not yet welcome the morning with joy. The mother tells her falsehoods to her child, but, thank heaven, the child does not grow up in its parent’s shadow. Our mother’s faith has not grown with her experience. Her experience has been too much for her. The lesson of life was too hard for her to learn.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)