Knowledge is intellectual understanding plus direct experience

Knowledge consists of both intellectual understanding and direct experience. The intellectual understanding about something supports and enriches the direct experience of it. The direct experience of something gives significance to the intellectual understanding about it. Both are supplementary and complementary. Both are necessary for complete knowledge.

As an example, suppose you have never heard of nor seen nor tasted a strawberry; it is completely unknown to you. I say to you:

I am going to give you a fruit called a strawberry. It is a little red fruit with green leaves. It is sweet and juicy and tart and delicious. It grows on a plant on the ground and can be eaten fresh, baked in a pie, cooked into jelly or preserves, or prepared in many other ways.

What I am doing is giving you the intellectual understanding about a strawberry. But at some point you will stop me and say: Enough! Please give me the strawberry. You have had enough intellectual understanding and are ready for the direct experience of seeing and tasting and smelling and touching the strawberry; you want to give significance to your understanding.

Suppose, on the other hand we go back to the beginning, to the point at which you have never heard of nor seen nor tasted a strawberry. This time I simply offer you a bowl of freshly-picked and washed strawberries and say: Here, taste one of these!

You pick up a strawberry and bite into it. The taste and smell of the sweet, tart, crunchy, juicy, red-with-green-leaves strawberry fills your senses. Immediately the questions arise: What is this called? Where does it come from? How was it grown? Can it be cooked? What nutrients does it contain? Can one be allergic to it?

You want to understand all about the strawberry to support and enrich your direct experience. This is how we grow in knowledge, throughout our lives, in steps of direct experience and intellectual understanding, with neither one getting very far ahead of the other.