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The Scientific Study of Personal Wisdom pp 325–341Cite as

The Scientific Study of Personal Wisdom

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Abstract

In this concluding chapter, we synthesize some of the main themes found in different chapters in the volume. We pay particular attention to the various dimensions, exemplars, and paradoxes that contributors raise about wisdom as a topic for scientific inquiry. In the second half of this chapter, we consider what the diversity of opinions presented about wisdom might imply for the scientific study of personal wisdom, how to reconcile these approaches, and possible future directions that such a science might take to advance our understanding of wisdom.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Usually including Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth), and, among the Apocrypha, The Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus (Ben Sirach).

  2. 2.

    The Mesopotamian king Sulgi of Ur (c. 2094–2047 BCE) was the first to describe himself as accomplished in the scribal arts, saying through in royal hymns that he was knew Sumerian, Akkadian, and was fluent in several other languages, understood mathematics, and was an accomplished musician and excelled at interpreting the signs in the entrails of sacrificial animals (Frahm, 2011).

  3. 3.

    Cicero Tusc IV 26.57, de Officio II.2.5, Seneca Letters to Lucilius 89.5.

  4. 4.

    About the same time, Epicurus (341–270 BCE) and his followers imagined the wise as a hedonic apolitical individual untroubled by the negative and irrational emotions, thoughts, and actions that cause human suffering; such a wise person becomes almost god-like among a small circle of friends. Edmondson proposes this ideal of wisdom, but no contributors seem to draw on it in their proposals for a personal science of wisdom, and it does not seem to fit Assmann’s categorization very easily.

  5. 5.

    A view also associated with Buddhism.

  6. 6.

    The Daoist alchemist conception of the wise as one who is able to transform himself into an immortal is also far from the contemporary view of what is means to be personally wise. Even if most contributors would agree with the importance of living in harmony with nature that is at the core of this wisdom tradition, their notion of self-transformation is psychological, not physical.

  7. 7.

    Wisdom is not mere knowledge about successful living, it is a skill that allows the wise to live well in community (including the problem, following Howard (2010), that modern societies are characterized by paradexity—i.e., the convergence of paradox and complexity).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Bloor Street West 252, M5S 1V6, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Michel Ferrari & Nic M. Weststrate

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  1. Michel Ferrari
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  2. Nic M. Weststrate
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Correspondence to Michel Ferrari .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Applied Psychology and Human Development, University of Toronto OISE, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Michel Ferrari

  2. Dept. Human Development & Applied Psychology, University of Toronto OISE, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Nic M. Weststrate

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Ferrari, M., Weststrate, N.M. (2013). The Scientific Study of Personal Wisdom. In: Ferrari, M., Weststrate, N. (eds) The Scientific Study of Personal Wisdom. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7987-7_15

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