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Can the world learn wisdom?

Maxwell, N; (2015) Can the world learn wisdom? Philosophy Now (108) pp. 32-35. Green open access

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Abstract

The crisis of our times is that we have science without wisdom. All our current global problems have arisen as a result. Learning how to become wiser has become, not a luxury, but a necessity. The key is to learn from the success of science. We need to learn from scientific progress how to achieve social progress towards a wiser world. This is an old idea that goes back to the French Enlightenment. However, in developing the idea, the philosophes of the Enlightenment made serious blunders, and it is their botched version of the Enlightenment programme that was developed throughout the 19th century, and built into academia all over the world in the early 20th century with the creation of the social sciences. As a matter of great urgency, we need to put right the intellectual/institutional blunders we have inherited from the 18th century. We need to bring about a revolution in academic inquiry so that the basic task becomes, not just to acquire knowledge, but to help humanity learn how to make progress towards a wiser world.

Type: Article
Title: Can the world learn wisdom?
Location: UK
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Publisher version: https://philosophynow.org/issues/108/Can_The_World...
Language: English
Additional information: © Philosophy Now 2015. With kind permission from the publisher
Keywords: Global problems, Academic revolution, Enlightenment programme, Wisdom-inquiry, Rationality, Aims of physics, Aims of academic inquiry
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Science and Technology Studies
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1469734
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