[Report on the round-table discussion of the subject "idea and experience" in connection with the 1977 annual meeting "process kinetics" of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina (Halle/S., October 16, 1977)].

A report is given about a round-table-discussion upon the role and meaning of "idea and experience" in the creative scientific process. Notable representatives of mathematics, theoretical physics and geophysics, chemistry, theoretical and general experimental biology, and of medicine contribute in the discussion guided by C. F. V. WEIZSACKER to this theme from point of view of their disciplines. The components of meaning of "idea and experience" in their connection one to another may be paraphrased by such pairs of terms as "theory and practice", "theoretical or empirical", "law and appearance of a single phenomenon", "unity and diversity", abstract and concrete". It was demonstrated that in each of the mentioned scientific disciplines there is a natural, and that, starting from mathematics and going to biology and medicine, the weight in that relation will shift more and more to "experience". Many of the known methodological problems and difficulties will arise in the mentioned scientific branches if one stresses immoderately only one component of "idea and experience" by leaving the natural, discipline-related range of variation of the relation "idea and experience".