Bob,
You are in the right place here for sure. I myself am having some attachment
to an academic institution, but chose to conduct my PhD research very
independently and not while working at University or so. I regard your below
contribution as very interesting actually. And it inspires me even more to
write something good also about this subject. I have some quite relevant
answers to some questions you are asking yourself. But actually I just have
to wait till my PhD dissertation is ready. Since your considerations fit in
with what I typed just some hours of last week. Butt it is too early to
discuss that now.
You are in the right place. And quiet wise already
Kind regards,
Wilfred Berendsen
_____
Van: Group concerned that academia should seek and promote wisdom
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] Namens Isabel Adonis
Verzonden: woensdag 17 mei 2006 18:17
Aan: [log in to unmask]
Onderwerp: Re: What next?
Dear Sirs,
I have been watching this list for a few days, wondering if I have any place
in it. Now it seems time to ask. My name is bob Macintosh and I am an
amateur of wisdom, which I think means the same as 'philosopher'. However,
by amateur, I also mean that I have no attachment to any academic
institution, and that I do not get paid for my thinking.
I am entirely in sympathy with the suggested vision statement, but the
mission statement I wish to question. I certainly want to encourage academia
to seek wisdom, but I am not sure that it can be promoted or that it is a
capacity.
Over the last couple of centuries, knowledge has increased exponentially,
yet wisdom has increased not at all. I question whether wisdom has any
connection with knowledge? Knowledge can be taught and , it can be
accumulated and passed on, it is capacity - to speak a language, or conduct
valid experiments, or pass exams, or whatever; but is wisdom like that?
Most of the conversation here has been about thinkers who have been largely
neglected by academia. The Laws of Form demonstrates that even an enquiry
into railway switches, if pursued in the right spirit can lead to wisdom,
but I suspect that it cannot be arrived at by following another, not even a
college professor, and not even George Spencer Brown. Incidentally, can I
reccomend as a complement to the above, The Ending of Time, by J
Krishnamurti & Dr David Bohm, which starts from the other end as it were,
and works backwards to the first distinction.
My own point of view is that wisdom is identical with love and also
rationality, which is the absence of self; it has nothing to do with
knowledge, and is not more widespread in academia than elsewhere. It would
be the height of folly to claim to have wisdom, to seek to set up any kind
of authority on it, or to try and promote it in anyone but oneself - but
perhaps I am in the wrong place, and talking about something completely
different using the same word.
best wishes,
bob Macintosh.
HYPERLINK
"http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/meetingpool/"http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/meetingp
ool/
HYPERLINK "http://bobtwice.blogspot.com/"http://bobtwice.blogspot.com/
----- Original Message -----
From: HYPERLINK "mailto:[log in to unmask]"Nicholas Maxwell
To: HYPERLINK
"mailto:[log in to unmask]"[log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2006 2:18 PM
Subject: What next?
Dear Friends of Wisdom,
We have announced our existence to the
world - or to the readers of the Times Higher Education Supplement - and we
have acquired new members. What do we do now? We are in broad agreement, I
take it, that universities ought to seek and promote wisdom more actively
and effectively than they do at present. But what does this involve? What
changes need to be made to research and education if these are to seek and
promote wisdom in an adequate way? How do we go about helping to bring the
required changes about? What do we do?
As I see it, we have two different but
related tasks before us.
(A) First, we need to continue to debate among ourselves what kind of
inquiry would adequately seek and help promote wisdom. Is it primarily a
question of teaching in such a way that, whatever else is being learned -
physics, history, anthropology, etc. - the student also acquires wisdom, as
the USA initiative "teaching for wisdom" would seem to hold? Or is
something more radical required? Does there need to be a transformation in
the overall aims and methods of inquiry, a change in the nature of
disciplines, in the way they are related to one another, and a change in the
way academia is related to the rest of society, if inquiry is to seek and
promote wisdom adequately? Do we, perhaps, need an intellectual and
cultural transformation comparable in importance to the scientific
revolution of the 17th century, or the Enlightenment of the 18th century?
(B) Assuming we come to some sort of rough agreement concerning (A), our
task is then to try to get across to our academic colleagues the need for
change, and ideas about what needs to change. It might be that what we need
to do, here, is to stimulate serious debate about what the aims and methods
of academic inquiry should be much more broadly, in and out of academic and
educational contexts. Or perhaps we do have specific changes in mind which
we hold need to be made to academia if it is to seek and promote wisdom
adequately - our task being to make out the case for these changes as
publicly and effectively as we can. Or perhaps we should ourselves begin to
practise what we preach (if we are not already doing just that), so that we
devote at least some of our own research, writing and teaching to the
promotion of wisdom (as best we can). Or are we primarily a sort of
meta-organization, facilitating communication between other people, groups,
organizations and societies who are engaged in the struggle to help create a
wiser world, and help create institutions of research and learning devoted
to that end?
(A) and (B) need to be carried on
simultaneously, of course. I don't wish to imply that (A) has to be
completed before we can begin with (B).
My own view, as I expect many of you
know, is that we do need a radical revolution in the aims and methods of
academic inquiry, a revolution in its structure and character, if it is to
seek and promote wisdom effectively, and in a genuinely rational way. I see
ideal human inquiry as a sort of rational development of animal inquiry -
the essential thing about animal inquiry being that it is learning how to
live, learning how to act in the world so as to survive and reproduce.
Human inquiry, too, ideally, ought to be (in my view) about learning how to
live, learning how to act and be in the world; problems of living ought to
be at the heart of the academic enterprise, and not, as at present, at the
periphery. The big differences between animal and human inquiry are, first,
the elaborately social character of the latter, and second that the basic
aims of life and of inquiry are, for us, not only survival and reproduction,
but rather the realization in life of what is genuinely of value (whatever
that may be). The basic aims of life, and of inquiry are, for us,
inherently problematic, and it ought to be a part of our task to try to
improve our aims as we live, as we learn and think.
This radical interpretation of our task
is reflected, to some extent, in our website (HYPERLINK
"http://www.knowledgetowisdom.org"www.knowledgetowisdom.org). Is it too
radical? Or not radical enough? What ought we to be trying to achieve?
In pursuing (A) and (B) I hope this
emailing group will try to exercise some restraint, and will not send
material or pursue discussion of matters only tangentially related to our
main concerns. I have already received one or two complaints on this score.
It has also been suggested to me that we should not send attachments to the
list: I am not sure how people feel about that.
Mathew Iredale, who helps me manage
this emailing group, has suggested to me that Friends of Wisdom ought to
have simple vision and mission statements, as many charities do. He says
"Although our aims may be varied and complex, applying as they do to so many
areas of life throughout the world, we ought to try and provide a simple
statement of what they are". And he proposes the following, which seem to
me to be excellent:-
Our vision statement:- We wish to help humanity learn how to create a
better world.
Our mission statement:- Our mission is to encourage academia to devote
itself to seeking and promoting wisdom by rational means, wisdom being the
capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others.
And he also suggests that we put
ourselves on a more formal basis and agree on a constitution for Friends of
Wisdom - perhaps a simplified version of the constitution of Scientists for
Global Responsibility (HYPERLINK
"http://www.sgr.org.uk/Constitution.html"http://www.sgr.org.uk/Constitution.
html).
My apologies for the length of this
email, clearly violating my request for restraint!
Best wishes,
Nick Maxwell
HYPERLINK "http://www.nick-maxwell.demon.co.uk"www.nick-maxwell.demon.co.uk
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