"Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power"
About this Quote
Experience is innocent; it delivers what happens, not what we wish would happen. The error lies in our judgments, especially when we demand from experience answers it cannot give. Leonardo da Vinci personifies experience as a patient witness. She records effects under particular conditions. We go wrong when we generalize beyond those conditions, misread causes, or expect certainty where only probability is possible. The data are not at fault; our interpretations are.
This stance grows from Leonardo’s lifelong devotion to osservazione and esperienza, the bedrock of his notebooks. He distrusted scholastic appeals to authority and preferred the stubborn facts of nature. At the same time he understood their limits. A single experiment in one set of circumstances cannot ground sweeping laws about all contexts. A sketch of a muscle from one cadaver does not exhaust anatomy. A successful water wheel in one river does not guarantee the same outcome in another. When designs failed, he did not accuse nature of error; he revised the design, the assumptions, or the question.
The line pushes for epistemic humility. Ask of experience only what lies within her power: what was observed, under what conditions, with what repeatability. Do not task her with metaphysical proofs or moral verdicts; do not force from her perfect precision in a world full of variables. Leonardo’s balanced method emerges here: practice disciplined by measurement and theory, theory corrected by trial. He famously warned against practice without theory and theory without practice; both maxims converge in this caution against overreach.
Modern science echoes the point. Observations are theory-laden, yet they constrain what we can claim. Statistical significance, controls, and replication exist to prevent the mind from outrunning the evidence. Blaming experience for our disappointment is a way of dodging responsibility. Better to refine the question, improve the method, and widen the sample. Wisdom, as Leonardo elsewhere said, is the daughter of experience, but only when judgment knows her limits.
This stance grows from Leonardo’s lifelong devotion to osservazione and esperienza, the bedrock of his notebooks. He distrusted scholastic appeals to authority and preferred the stubborn facts of nature. At the same time he understood their limits. A single experiment in one set of circumstances cannot ground sweeping laws about all contexts. A sketch of a muscle from one cadaver does not exhaust anatomy. A successful water wheel in one river does not guarantee the same outcome in another. When designs failed, he did not accuse nature of error; he revised the design, the assumptions, or the question.
The line pushes for epistemic humility. Ask of experience only what lies within her power: what was observed, under what conditions, with what repeatability. Do not task her with metaphysical proofs or moral verdicts; do not force from her perfect precision in a world full of variables. Leonardo’s balanced method emerges here: practice disciplined by measurement and theory, theory corrected by trial. He famously warned against practice without theory and theory without practice; both maxims converge in this caution against overreach.
Modern science echoes the point. Observations are theory-laden, yet they constrain what we can claim. Statistical significance, controls, and replication exist to prevent the mind from outrunning the evidence. Blaming experience for our disappointment is a way of dodging responsibility. Better to refine the question, improve the method, and widen the sample. Wisdom, as Leonardo elsewhere said, is the daughter of experience, but only when judgment knows her limits.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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