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Experiential knowledge (experience in this sense) is knowledge and / or skills acquired in the process of direct experiences,
impressions, observations, practical actions, as opposed to knowledge achieved through abstract thinking; unity of knowledge and skills. One of the basic concepts of the theory of knowledge.
Aristotle’s experience
Aristotle believes that “people gain experience through memory; namely, many memories of one and the same object acquire the meaning of one experience. And the experience seems almost the same with science and art.» However, «science and art arise in people through experience.» “Art appears when, on the basis of thoughts acquired through experience, one general view of similar objects is formed.”
“So, for example, to consider that Callius with such and such an illness was helped by such and such a remedy, and it also helped Socrates and also many individually, is a matter of experience; and to determine that this remedy for such and such a disease helps all such and such people of one kind of warehouse (for example, lethargic or bilious with a strong fever), is a matter of art.
“As far as activity is concerned, experience seems to be no different from art; nay, we see that those who have experience succeed more than those who have abstract knowledge but no experience. The reason for this is that experience is knowledge of the individual, and art is knowledge of the general, while every action and every production belongs to the individual: after all, the healer does not heal a person in general, except in an incidental way, but Callias or Socrates or someone else from those who bears a name — for whom being a man is something incidental. Therefore, if someone has abstract knowledge, but does not have experience and cognizes the general, but does not know the individual contained in it, then he often makes mistakes in treatment, because one has to treat the individual.
Literature
- Aristotle. «Metaphysics»