Exploring Human Experience

Abstract: This essay argues that since human experience consists inseparably of mind, body and the material world, and that if were are to better understand the lives of people in the past we need to recognize that we cannot separate material culture, social process and life-tasks from the experiences of the people who carried them out. Personal experience of a thing can never produce an understanding of that thing that another might have without first discussing who this ?other? is and what their motivations are for being there. The constitution of experience, as an inseparable mix of mind, body and the world prevents the identification, in the present, of ?prehistoric? experiences in the present. An understanding of the theory of human experience can, however, demonstrate that change and the appropriation or alteration of activities and beliefs for new ends can easily be motivated by the power that certain experiences have on us. Thus understanding human experience helps us make new interpretations of the past.