ABSTRACT
Let’s start with the critical, first phase of the learning cycle: concrete experience. This is the input phase of our meaningmaking. This is the time during which we acquire the raw material which our reflection and abstract conceptualization will later refine. Many writers have noted the fundamental significance of this phase of our knowing. For example, Nietzsche wrote,
Nietzsche is not saying that we can only learn things which we already know. He does not see our personalities as closed systems which are somehow preordained at birth, or before. Rather, he is saying that we cannot conceptualize something for which no experiential base exists, even if that foundation lies only in our Imagination. When we think about the sequence of the phases of the learning cycle-concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, active experimentation-the remark
makes perfect sense. The poet John Keats made a similar observation:
The point which both Nietzsche and Keats are making is that to an important degree what comes out of our minds depends on what goes in.
