Great news Nick. I will circulate the
press release to my email lists.
Samer
Samer G.
Bagaeen B.Sc. (Hons) PG Cert. Grad. Dip. M.Sc. Ph.D. ARIBA MHEA
Urban Design
Studies Unit
Department of
131 Rottenrow
T 0141 548 3985
F 0141 552 3997
E [log in to unmask]"
title="[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
W http://homepages.strath.ac.uk/~cas04116/
From:
Group concerned that academia should seek and promote wisdom
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Nicholas Maxwell
Sent: 09 May 2006 14:44
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Press Release
Dear Friends of Wisdom,
A news item about Friends of Wisdom is to appear in the Times Higher Education
Supplement on 12 May - the journal appears in newsagents here in the
Best wishes,
Nick
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Press release from FRIENDS OF WISDOM
A new group calls for a radical change in the role played by
universities in society. Friends of Wisdom,
an international group of academics and others are calling on universities to
address the most important problems facing humanity.
There is a news item about Friends of
Wisdom in this week’s Times
Higher Education Supplement (12 May).
According to Friends of Wisdom,
the relationship of universities to government, the media, to business,
students and the public at large is profoundly inadequate and needs to be
re-thought to tackle the pressing current and future problems of humanity.
Universities and academics need to become fully engaged with the
societies in which they exist and to which they should be contributing. Such
engagement will transform the activity of universities, connecting the pursuit
of knowledge to the task of enabling human beings to flourish and work
together to solve human problems, reduce human conflict and live in a
sustainable relationship with nature.
This radical new group says that universities need to help humanity
acquire the wisdom we can no longer afford to be without, challenging
politicians, raising public debate, empowering individuals with the highest
quality education. They must also promote critical debate about what is
genuinely of value in life and how it is to be achieved.
At present universities seek to help promote human welfare (insofar as
they do) by, in the first instance, acquiring knowledge. First, knowledge is
to be acquired; then it can be applied to help solve social problems.
But this is damagingly irrational. If the basic aim really is to help
promote human welfare, then the problems that need to be solved are,
fundamentally, problems of living,
not problems of knowledge. The
intellectually fundamental task of universities ought to be to help humanity
learn how to tackle its problems of living in more rational and cooperative
ways than at present, so that we may make progress towards a better world. The
pursuit of knowledge is important, but a secondary matter.
The aim of Friends of Wisdom
is to help change our universities and schools so that they take up their
proper task of helping all of us learn how to realize what is genuinely of
value in life.
Nicholas Maxwell
Emeritus Reader in Philosophy of Science at
Tel:- 020 7263 0279
Email: [log in to unmask]
Websites: http://www.knowledgetowisdom.org