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":
... 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 ...
... In Ancient Rome it was believed that personal experience was part of some divine or species-wide collective experience ... and military morale with such notions, than a strictly personal idea of experience ... were notable investigators of these ideas of collective experience in the 20th century ...
... Able to offer appropriate command experience on fixed-wing aircraft or helicopters ... 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 ...
Famous quotes containing the word experience:
“... pure and intelligent women can be deceived and misled by the baser sort, their very innocence and experience making them credulous and the helpless tools of the guilty and bold.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“The traditional novel form continues to enlarge our experience in those very areas where the wide-angle lens and the Cinerama screen tend to narrow it.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“Experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss- house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing and hearing the significant things, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and co-ordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)