Importance Of Experience Is The Only Source Of Knowledge

Albert Einstein said that the only source of knowledge is experience. Rationalists seek to discover knowledge through reason only considering that sensory experience is deceptive, therefore unreliable. Empiricists argue that experience is all we have to gather knowledge and we will have to settle for less certainty. Thus the great debate on whether or not experience is the source of all knowledge. John Locke argues that there are no innate ideas, all of us being a tabula rasa when we are born. People with disabilities cannot be so certain of things so they basically have no other choice to rely on their sensory experience in order to gain knowledge. Locke says that knowledge does come from ideas, but these ideas come from experience. He believes

Experiencing new things all the time can definitely improve one 's knowledge, but reason helps determine how much of this knowledge is accumulated through experience which can be useful. Our brain retains information on a daily basis, but how much from that we can consider knowledge? If that information teaches us something it can be considered knowledge that we can pass it on to others. Most of the times people tend to believe everything they hear and consider that they know more than others. This give a person the belief that they have the right to tell others what they know. It results in becoming more an opinion if one did not experiment with it themselves leading to knowledge lost in the end. To pin point an absolute truth is very difficult to identify from all the information gathered throughout life. It can be useful knowledge if just experience is enough. This is the beauty of being human after all, as humans we acquire knowledge till the day we die, regardless what the source. The bigger the well of knowledge we accumulate, the better chances we will understand our world and to try to live a harmonious life. If knowledge is indeed power, then we might get the power to avoid misunderstanding each other, which can head off a lot of problems. Richard Rorty in the Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature said it best, “The eventual demarcation of philosophy from science was made possible by the notion that