Wisdom (eBook)

Stephen S. Hall (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2010 | 1. Auflage
352 Seiten
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (Verlag)
978-0-307-59309-2 (ISBN)

Infos

We all recognize wisdom, but defining it is more elusive. In this fascinating journey from philosophy to science, Stephen S. Hall gives us a penetrating history of wisdom, from its sudden emergence in the fifth century B.C. to its modern manifestations in education, politics, and the workplace. Hall's bracing exploration of the science of wisdom allows us to see this ancient virtue with fresh eyes, yet also makes clear that despite modern science's most powerful efforts, wisdom continues to elude easy understanding.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Textauszug

Wisdom Defined (Sort Of) You, my friend . . . are you not ashamed . . . to care so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? --Socrates, defending himself at his trial CHAPTER ONE WHAT IS WISDOM? The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty if we are strong, even then their span is only toil and trouble, they are soon gone, and we fly away . . . So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart. --Psalm 90 That man is best who sees the truth himself, Good too is he who listens to wise counsel. But who is neither wise himself nor willing To ponder wisdom is not worth a straw. --Hesiod ON A BEAUTIFUL FALL MORNING nearly a decade ago, like hundreds of mornings before and since, I dropped off one of my children at school. Micaela, then five years old, had just started first grade, and the playground chatter among both the children and their parents reflected that mix of nervous unfamiliarity and comforting reconnection that marks the beginning of the school year. I lingered in the schoolyard until Micaela lined up with her teacher and classmates. She wore a pretty purple dress that my mother had just sent her, white socks, and pink-and-white-checkered sneakers. A hair band exposed her hopeful, eager, beautiful face. I sneaked in a last hug, as impulsive dads are wont to do, before she disappeared into the building. The time was about 8:40 a.m. As I left the schoolyard and began to head toward the subway and home to Brooklyn, I heard a thunderous, unfamiliar roar overhead. As the noise grew louder and closer, I froze in an instinctive crouch, much like the rats we always read about in scientific experiments on fear, wondering where the sound was coming from, knowing only that it was ominously out of the ordinary. Moments later, a huge shadow with metal wings passed directly over my head, like some prehistoric bird of prey. I instantly recognized it as a large twin-engine commercial airliner, but nothing in my experience prepared me for what happened next. I watched for the endless one . . . two . . . three . . . four seconds it took for this shiny man-made bird to fly directly into the tall building that I faced several blocks away. In real time, I watched a 395,000-pound airplane simply disappear. Almost immediately black smoke began to curl out of the cruel, grinning incision its wings had sliced in the faade of the skyscraper. In moments when life's regular playbook flies out the window, when the ground shifts beneath our feet in a literal or figurative earthquake, we feel a surge of adrenalized fear at the shock of the unexpected. But right behind that feeling comes the struggle to make sense of the seemingly senseless, to try to understand what has just happened and what it means so that we will know how to think about a future that suddenly seems uncertain and unpredictable. In truth, the future is always unpredictable, which is why these moments of shock remind us, with unusual urgency, that we have a constant (if often unconscious) need for wisdom, too. Although we now all know exactly what happened that terrible morning, the ground truth in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001, was much fuzzier at 8:45 a.m. One of the hallmarks of wisdom, what distinguishes it so sharply from 'mere' intelligence, is the ability to exercise good judgment in the face of imperfect knowledge. In short, do the right thing--ethically, socially, familiarly, personally. Sometimes, as on this day, we have to deliberate these decisions in the midst of an...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 9.3.2010
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Allgemeine Psychologie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie
• Themenwelt: Technik
• ISBN-10: 0-307-59309-6 / 0307593096
• ISBN-13: 978-0-307-59309-2 / 9780307593092