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Thank you
Dear Friends of Wisdom,
I have decided I am going to send off campaigning emails, one or two a day, to all and sundry, until the day I die. The first three have already been sent – to Polly Toynbee and George Monbiot of The Guardian, and Will Hutton of The Observer. I would be very grateful for suggestions for people I might send this email to, especially if accompanied by email addresses. Here is the campaigning email:-
In order to solve the grave global problems we face - climate change, population growth, extinction of species, war, inequality and the rest - we need governments to act appropriately. But governments are unlikely to be much more enlightened than electorates. Hence we require the public to have a good understanding of what our problems are, and what we need to do about them. That in turn requires that universities are devoted to intelligent public education about our problems and how to solve them. At present universities, devoted primarily to the pursuit of knowledge, fail disastrously to do what is required. As I have spelled out in detail in my From Knowledge to Wisdom (Blackwell, 1984), we urgently need to bring about a revolution in academic inquiry so that the basic intellectual aim becomes social wisdom and not just specialized knowledge. Problems of living need to be put at the heart of the academic enterprise. Disciplines, the relationship between disciplines, and the relationship between the university as a whole and society, all need to change in quite specific and radical ways. A new paradigm for academic inquiry is required. The outcome would be a kind of inquiry rationally designed and devoted to helping humanity tackle problems of climate change and other global problems effectively, intelligently and humanely.
I hope you will join with me, and with 370 academics and educationalists around the world, members of Friends of Wisdom, in spreading awareness, whenever possible, of the urgent need to bring about a revolution in academic inquiry. The future of humanity may depend on it.
For an outline of the argument, see my From Knowledge to Wisdom: The Need for an Academic Revolution. In: Barnett, R and Maxwell, N, (eds.) Wisdom in the University. (1 - 19). Routledge: London, UK.
For a list of 23 structural changes that need to be made to create the kind of inquiry we need see http://www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom/whatneedstochange .
Best wishes,
Nicholas Maxwell
Science and Technology Studies, University College London
Website: www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom
Publications online: http://philpapers.org/profile/17092
http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/view/people/ANMAX22.date.html