Wisdom From Philosophy to Neuroscience by Stephen S. Hall, Knopf Publishing.
Wisdom is a rare and precious commodity. The biblical Book of Proverbs asserts: “Wisdom is better than rubies, and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.” In Pirkei Avot, the tractate from the Mishnah, it is asked, “Who is wise?” and the answer is given, “He who learns from every man.”
Avot also indicates that there are seven marks of the wise person. “He does not speak before one greater than he is in wisdom; or break in upon the words of his fellow; or hasten to make reply. He asks what is relevant and gives a proper answer; he speaks on the first point first and on the last point last; if what he has heard lacks tradition, he says, ‘I have heard naught,’ and he agrees to what is true.”
Obviously, wisdom is more than the sum total of our accumulated knowledge, but a unique mixture of experience, understanding, insight and humanity.
Some years ago, according to the author, Canadian psychologists asked a random group of college undergraduates to nominate persons, historical or modern, who struck them as especially wise. Here are the names they came up with: “Mahatma Gandhi, Confucius, Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., Socrates, Mother Teresa, Solomon, Buddha, the Pope, Oprah Winfrey, Winston Churchill, the Dalai Lama, Ann Landers, Nelson Mandela and Queen Elizabeth II, in that order.”
It is significant that not one person was chosen from the worlds of science, literature or North American history. Another troubling surprise is the relative absence of women, and the questionable wisdom of some of those chosen.
Stephen Hall is a veteran science journalist who has written extensively and in a popular fashion about the intersection of science and society.
What is noteworthy, and even exciting, about this book is how modern brain science can explain some of the most important facets of mental activity, such as language use, reasoning, moral judgments and imagination. The advent of MRI scanners has for the first time made possible burrowing down into successive layers of the brain and observing it actually at work.
The demand for wisdom is thrust upon us on a daily basis, in matters significant and mundane, in settings as private as the bedroom, or as public as a jury room.
Hall writes of a prominent neurosurgeon who spotted unmistakable signs of early Alzheimer’s disease in U.S. president Ronald Reagan while he was still in office. Watching him nod off during president George Bush’s inauguration he said to himself, “Brain stem gone.” He added, “I was convinced that a significant portion of Reagan’s second term had taken place in the shadow of his slippage toward early dementia.”
Recent findings, writes Hall, indicate that older adults are more supple in their assessments of problems and are able to perceive the social context of a situation better than younger adults. And perhaps most important, when it comes to settling on a strategy of action they display greater flexibility.
Perhaps, ultimately, the quest for wisdom must remain a chimera. It involves subjective judgments, the values and mores of a particular time or place and often a range of ambiguous possibilities. Socrates should give us pause with his apothegm, “If you think you’re wise, you’re probably a fool.”
Nonetheless, this ambitious, informative and well-written study is an invaluable guide to a complex and many-sided subject.
