Without experience, can a person truly possess knowledge?

Knowledge, no. Wisdom, yes.

Without experience, you will never leave the cognitive state of a fetus.

Whenever there’s a supremely intelligent, wise, all knowing person in films, it’s normally some old reclusive guy who lives on the top of a mountain.
No experiences, just a fucking mahoosive brain capacity.

Yes you do not need experience to know things. I know a lot about sky diving but will never go sky diving and never get that experience to know what it is like to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.

Experience is key to have that knowledge have purpose and when you combine experience with this knowledge you can also gain wisdom as you experience both success and failures from the attempts of putting that knowledge in to action. Experiencing things also brings new knowledge making you more informed and doing and experiencing things to higher levels and maybe even becoming expert with this knowledge.

I love to learn new things but for me life is all about new experiences.

@SadieMartinPaul I was going to answer it the other way;

Knowledge – yes. Wisdom – no.

I feel that knowledge can be book learning but wisdom only comes from experience, if it comes at all.

Yes, but only a partial amount of knowledge. First-hand knowledge requires experience.

Gifted:

Experience is not necessary, but imagination is.

Experiments have shown that when you imagine something in your mind (anything from a physical movement to an emotion) your brain has the same type of activity as if you were actually doing the act.

This is an example of a sort of latent learning ability that human beings have. It has kept us alive as a species for millenia and allowed us to invent things like bridges, rocket ships, and hair curlers.

No need to do everything the hard way.

@janbb I was answering the body of the question: “Is experience a necessary element to possess knowledge?

Knowledge comes easily; wisdom comes from living. It’s school v. the school of hard-knocks.

@SadieMartinPaul Aha! We were on the same page then after all!

This is the critical difference between knowledge and wisdom.

Wisdom is knowledge and experience combined.