From the Latin experientia, experiri, composed of ex- and perior, the original meaning is to try, to attempt. In common parlance it is in sharp opposition to study and is a synonym for practice and learning through trial and error. From experience comes, in fact, experiment, which in science over the centuries has gained more and more credibility and substantiation. It is a non-exact mode of verification and study that modifies nature to obtain certain results.
Whereas the expert is an individual who can perfectly assess the risks, dangers and potentials of a certain thing in a certain field, and this level of confidence has been achieved mainly by experience and not only by study or special gifts and predispositions.
Experience is so important and fundamental that philosophers such as empiricists have based their entire doctrine on it.
What definition do we give to experience? What does it mean to experience something? Surely if I conduct research, work in a business, conduct a visit with a patient, or take a theater course I experience it, but can I automatically consider myself an expert?
What is the sign or testimony that makes me aware that I have experienced something and at what point in the experience can I also consider myself an expert? When I no longer make mistakes and can even predict them, or when I can simply teach and bring back my personal background to other people who rely on me?
Questions do not help to indentify one thing but to expand it as a whole. We can rely on the dictionary definition of experience or we can live it and report what we have learned and what we have discovered.
In a company, the manager’s experience also includes that of the employees and his colleagues and depends on them because it is also formed and shaped through theirs.
In the conversation between physician and patient, the two experiences converge and merge into one while considering due distinctions between the two.
The physician will bring to bear professional experience for diagnosis, for example, but also a part of personal experience to listen, understand and accommodate the fears, anxieties and expectations of the other person who trusts and relies on him.
The latter, on the other hand, will be led to convey his or her experience of illness , for example, or even of treatment and healing.