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Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.
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This is declared to be "an old Kantian maxim" in General Systems Vol. 7-8 (1962)?, p. 11, by the Society for the Advancement of General Systems Theory, but may simply be a paraphrase or summation of Kantian ideas.
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Kant's treatment of the transcendental logic in the First Critique contains a portion, of which this quote may be an ambiguously worded paraphrase. Kant, claiming that both reason and the senses are essential to the formation of our understanding of the world, writes: "Without sensibility no object would be given to us, and without understanding none would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind (A51/B75)".

 

Immanuel Kant

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The initial stage of that developing experience which is called thinking is experience. This remark may sound like a silly truism. It ought to be one; but unfortunately it is not. On the contrary, thinking is often regarded both in philosophic theory and in educational practice as something cut off from experience, and capable of being cultivated in isolation. In fact, the inherent limitations of experience are often urged as the sufficient ground for attention to thinking. Experience is then thought to be confined to the senses and appetites; to a mere material world, while thinking proceeds from a higher faculty (of reason), and is occupied with spiritual or at least literary things.

 

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