Experience

   1) Subjective and Objective Knowledge

   Any kind of experience-accidental impressions, observations, and even "inner experience" not induced by stimuli received from the environment-may initiate cognitive processes leading to changes in a person's knowledge. Thus, new knowledge can be acquired without new information being received. (That this statement refers to subjective knowledge goes without saying; but there is no such thing as objective knowledge that was not previously somebody's subjective knowledge. (Machlup & Mansfield, 1983, p. 644)

   2) We Have an Untenable Concept of the Nature of Experience

   Our faith in experience is far from well grounded, because we have an untenable concept of the nature of experience, one that assumes truth is manifest, and does not have to be inferred. (Brehmer, 1986, p. 715)

   3) Without Experience, Nothing Can Be Sufficiently Known

   I now wish to unfold the principles of experimental science, since without experience nothing can be sufficiently known. For there are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely by reasoning and experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience. . . . Aristotle's statement then that proof is reasoning that causes us to know is to be understood with the proviso that the proof is accompanied by its appropriate experience, and is not to be understood of the bare proof. . . . He therefore who wishes to rejoice without doubt in regard to the truths underlying phenomena must know how to devote himself to experiment. (Bacon, 1928, Pt. VI, Chap. 1)