experience

experience living through events and the impression on a person or animal of events. In epistemology, a distinction is made between things known inductively, from experience, and those known deductively or theoretically, from a priori principles. The ancients, under the influence of Plato and of Euclidean geometry, tended to prize deductive or theoretical knowledge above that gained through experience. Their influence was dominant through the Renaissance. With the rise of modern empirical science the preference was reversed. Immanuel Kant's critical epistemology, however, emphasized the dependence of all experience on the mediation of the intelligence. Modern thought has tended to agree with Kant; accordingly, discussion has centered on what, if anything, can be said to be immediately experience, and how this experience may be conditioned by social factors affecting the social milieu or by perceptual processes themselves.

experience experience is the best teacher sometimes used with the implication that learning by experience may be painful. The saying is recorded from the mid 16th century, but the ultimate source is the Latin saying ‘experientia docet [experience teaches]’, and the proverb exists in a number of forms. (Compare experience keeps a dear school.)
experience is the father of wisdom real understanding of something comes only from direct experience of it. The saying is recorded in English from the mid 16th century, but the Greek lyric poet Alcman of the 7th century bc has, ‘experience is the beginning of knowledge.’
experience keeps a dear school lessons learned from experience can be painful (compare experience is the best teacher). The saying is recorded from the mid 18th century.

experience †trial; observation of facts; condition or event by which one is affected XIV; knowledge resulting from observation; state of having been occupied in some way XV. — (O)F. expérience — L. experientia, f. experīrī try; see EX-1, PERIL, -ENCE.
Hence vb. XVI. So experiment †test, trial; action undertaken to discover or test something. XIV. Hence vb. †experience, ascertain, test XV; make an experiment XVIII. experimental XV. — (O)F. or medL. expert trained by experience XIV. — (O)F. expert, refash. of †espert after L. expertus, pp. of experīrī. expert one who is expert, specialist. XIX. — F., sb. use of the adj. expertise XIX. — F.