The Purported Science of Wisdom

One of the common themes that is going to keep coming up on this blog is how there are specific areas that science just doesn't belong. This is not to say, however, that we should ignore the conclusions of science or that the humanities and religious thought aren't also susceptible to overreach, but those are topics for another day. An example of scientific overreach is highlighted in this review of the book Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience.

There are, according to Hall and the researchers he meets, eight attributes of wisdom: Emotional Regulation, Knowing What's Important, Moral Reasoning, Compassion, Humility, Altruism, Patience, and Dealing with Uncertainty.

The huge flaw in breaking out wisdom in this way is that the eight attributes really all boil down to one: Understanding What's Important (Knowing is such a science word), especially because displaying any of the other traits in excess is downright unwise. For example, Humility is understanding that the things we don't know are often more important than the things we do know. But the truly wise will recognize that humility in the face of foolishness is overrated. Likewise, Patience is understanding that waiting is often more important than not waiting. Compassion is understanding that it is important to acknowledge the suffering of others and commiserate with them. Still, wisdom sometimes dictates knowing when people need to be told to just suck it up and keep on trucking. Emotional Regulation is understanding it is important to control your emotions or, sometimes, to let them out. I'll leave it to you to construct the rest, but it really seems that in naming Knowing What's Important as a single component of wisdom, scientists really just end up demonstrating that they don't know what's important.

If all you're left with, then, is that wisdom is understanding what's important, well, you haven't really defined anything, you've just restated the problem.

That said, I think the most disturbing oversight in this attempt to break wisdom into its constituent pieces is the failure to examine where wisdom comes from and why it's important. I mean, watching "wisdom" flash through an fMRI is great and all, but it's really just a parlor trick unless you can actually show us how to get more of it. To that end, I think a large unmentioned aspect of wisdom is understanding that sometimes suffering enriches our experience of life. I can tell you from personal experience that living for a year in China, going through break-ups, and studying difficult texts were not the most pleasant experiences in my life. But they were the experiences that shaped me the most, and had the most to do with teaching me what is valuable and how I could become a better person. I would not give them up for anything. But I think society as a whole would be very reluctant to embrace this aspect of wisdom, and if science is going to do the humanist any favors, it could attempt to understand why.