Differing notions of experience divide philosophers John Dewey and John Locke. The views of both have meaning in terms of such human endeavors as scientific inquiry and relate to scientific meaning.
Locke's view of experience sees the world as preexisting and the mind as learning from experience. Locke believes that the mind at birth is a tabula rasa, a blank slate, and it is only through experience that knowledge is gained. Any knowledge possessed by the individual would be knowledge gained through experience. In the beginning, however, the individual has no experience. In the Garden of Eden, when Eve has experience of reaching for the extended red apple, it is a new one, the outcome of which will teach her a lesson she could not have gained otherwise. She has been told not to perform this action, and yet the consequences of performing the action are unknown to her until she has performed the action and suffered the consequences. What she can perceive at this point are simple ideas, ideas that originate from experience and that cannot be broken down into simpler entities. These ideas are produced in the mind by sensory experience, the experience of extension, of shape and size:
These simple Ideas, the Materials of all our Knowledge, are suggested and furnished to the Mind, only by those two ways above mentioned, viz. Sensation and Reflection (Locke 121).
The knowledge involved is not such as could be produced in any way but through the senses and through the reflection necessary to give the perceived qualities a name. "Red" is a quality that cannot be explained or imagined. It can only be pointed out and accepted--this is red, and whenever you see it, it is red. Red is not an inherent quality, however, but is produced through the act of perception. It is a secondary rather than a primary quality. Extension is a primary quality, as are size and shape. Color is a secondary quality that exists as an idea onl...