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Experiencing

 

 

Definition of experience (John Dewey)
From experience to knowledge (John Locke)
Experience  as empirical cognition (Immanuel Kant)
Attention and experience (William James)
Participation and communication (John Dewey)
Experience and thought (John Dewey)
Learning through experiencing (Herbert A. Simon)
Experiencing and understanding (Max Wertheimer)
Theory and experience (Paul Feyerabend)
Good experience in science (Henri Poincaré)

 

 

Definition of experience

[1916, First edition] John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic 
“In the experience ... are all the physical features of the environment, extending out into space no one can say how far, and all the habits and interests extending backward and forward in time, of the organism which uses the typewriter, and which notes the written form of the word only as temporary focus in a vast and changing scene.”
 “... when the word ‘experience’ is employed in the text it means just such an immense and operative world of diverse and interacting elements.”
 “... the word ‘experience’ suggests ... an actual focusing of the world at one point in a focus of immediate shining apparency.”
(Chapter I, p. 7)

 

From experience to knowledge 

[1690] John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
“Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas : - How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE. In that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself.”
(Book II, Chapter 1, Section 1)

 

Experience as empirical cognition

[1781] Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
“Experience is possible only through the representation of a necessary connection of perceptions.”
“Experience is an empirical cognition; that is to say, a cognition which determines an object by means of perceptions. It is therefore a synthesis of perceptions, a synthesis which is not itself contained in perception, but which contains the synthetical unit of the manifold of perception in a consciousness; and this unity constitutes the essential of our cognition of objects of the senses, that is, of experience.” (p. 72)
(Transcendental Doctrine of the Faculty of Judgment, or, Analytic of Principles : System of the Principles of Pure Understanding, section III, § 3)

 

Attention and experience

[1890] William James, The Principles of Psychology
“A man’s empirical thought depends on the things he has experienced, but what these shall be is to a large extent determined by his habits of attention. A thing may be present to him a thousand times, but if he persistently fails to notice it, it cannot be said to enter into his experience. We are all seeing flies, moths, and beetles by the thousand, but to whom, save an entomologist, do they say anything distinct? On the other hand, a thing met only once in a lifetime may leave an indelible experience in the memory.” (Chapter IX)
“My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind - without selective interest, experience is utter chaos. Interest alone gives accent and emphasis, light and shade, background, and foreground - intelligible perspective, in a word.” (Chapter XI)

 

Participation and communication 

[1979, First Published 1934] John Dewey, Art as Experience 
“Experience in the degree in which it is experience is heightened vitality.
... it signifies active and alert commerce with the world; at its height it signifies complete interpenetration of self and the world of objects and events.” (Chapter I, p. 19)
"... Experience is the result, the sign, and the reward of that interaction of organism and environment which, when it is carried to the full, is a transformation of interaction into participation and communication.”  
(Chapter II, p. 22)

 

Experience and thought 

[1903] John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic
“There is always as antecedent to think an experience of subject-matter of the physical or social world, or the previously organized intellectual world, whose parts are actively at war with each other - so much so that they threaten to disrupt the situation, which accordingly for its own maintenance requires deliberate redefinition and re-relation of its tensional parts. This redefining and re-relating is the constructive process termed thinking: the reconstructive situation, with its part in tension and in such movement toward each other as tends to a unified arrangement of things, is the thought-situation.”
(Chapter III, pp. 124-125)

 

Learning through experiencing

[1988, second edition] Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial
“It is generally recognized that in order to acquire new tastes in music, a good prescription is to hear more music; in painting, to look at paintings; in wine, to drink good wines. Exposure to new experiences is almost certain to change the criteria of choice, and most human beings deliberately seek out such experiences.” (Chapter 6, p. 186)

 

Experiencing and understanding

[1959] Max Wertheimer, Productive Thinking
“... the role of past experience is of high importance, but what matters is what one has gained from experience - blind, ununderstood connections, or insight into structural inner relatedness. What matters is how and what one recalls, how one applies what is recalled, whether blindly, in a piecemeal way, or in accordance with the structural requirements of the situation.” (Chapter 1, p. 62)

 

Theory and experience

[1975] Paul Feyerabend, Against Method 
“Experience arises together with theoretical assumptions not before them, and an experience without theory is just as incomprehensible as is (allegedly) a theory without experience.” (Chapter 14, p. 168)

 

Good experience in science

[1968, First Published 1902] Henri Poincaré, La Science et l'Hypothèse
"Qu'est-ce donc qu'une bonne expérience ? C'est celle qui nous fait connaître autre chose qu'un fait isolé ; c'est celle qui nous permet de prévoir, c'est-à -dire celle qui nous permet de généraliser." (Chapter IX, p. 158) 

 

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