Top Research Papers on Wisdom

What is wisdom? What does a wise person know? Can a wise person know how to act and live well without knowing the whys and wherefores of his own action? How is wisdom acquired? This Element addresses questions regarding the nature and acquisition of wisdom by developing and defending a skill theory of wisdom. Specifically, this theory argues that if a person S is wise, then (i) S knows that overall attitude success contributes to or constitutes well-being; (ii) S knows what the best means to achieve well-being are; (iii) S is reliably successful at acting and living well (in light of what S kn...

ABSTRACT We propose that wisdom should be considered in understanding, identifying, and developing skills of thought translated into action in gifted children and adults. First, we review some of the history of the gifted field and conclude that ideas about understanding, identification, and instruction are largely obsolete and based on assumptions that might have seemed valid in the early 20th century but that now are known not to be. Second, we discuss wisdom—what it is and how it is structured. Third, we discuss different kinds of wisdom and why they matter. We further discuss “4W’s” of wis...

The following references are mainly related to the various aspects of decision-making, problem-solving, the development of abilities such as persuation, leadership and negotiation and to various aspects of expertise and creativity in different domains. The references are divided in the following sections: (1) Judgement, Reasoning and Decision-Making, focusing on the cognitive aspects of the decision making process, how it is influenced by the use frugal heuristics and choices rules as well as by the decision maker's judgment and perception of the decision problem; (2) The art of persuation, ne...

The Psychology of Wisdom: An Introduction is the first comprehensive coursebook on wisdom, providing an engaging, balanced, and expert introduction to the psychology of wisdom. It provides a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the psychological science of wisdom, covering wide-ranging perspectives. Each chapter includes extensive pedagogy, including a summary, a glossary, bolded terms, practical applications, discussion questions, and a brief description of the authors' research. Topics include the philosophical foundations, folk conceptions, and psychological theories of wisdom; relations...

Among the earliest of the deuterocanonical books of the OT, the Wisdom of Ben Sira, also known as the Book of Sirach, contains the most comprehensive sample of wisdom literature preserved in the Bible. This literature also includes the Books of Job, Proverbs, Qoheleth or Ecclesiastes, the Wisdom of Solomon, and several so-called Wisdom Psalms. The book offers moral, cultic, and ethical aphorisms, folk proverbs, psalms of praise and lament, theological and philosophical thoughts, homiletic urging, and pointed comments about life and customs of the day. Hence it has been popular with both Jews a...

The world is simultaneously facing many crises that humanity is failing to solve. Yet, at the same time, humans are smarter (with IQs on average thirty points higher than a century ago) and more knowledgeable (with the world's knowledge base at our fingertips), and scientific advances are accelerating. However, intelligence and knowledge are not enough: wisdom harnesses these strengths to serve the common good. Education is focused on acquiring knowledge, but schools would do better also to teach and test for the development of wisdom. To a lot of people, wisdom is an abstraction, but there is...

Understanding one's personal issues and emotional reactions- one's "countertransference"- has long been recognized as a core competency in ministry. Now new understandings of intersubjectivity, mutual influence, shared wisdom (both conscious and unconscious), and multicultural dynamics in the caring relationship are bringing promising new possibilities and challenges to pastoral practice. Employing these insights, in this groundbreaking book Pamela Cooper-White offers a new relational paradigm for pastoral assessment and theological reflection. She uses the caregiver's own responses and feelin...

It would be desirable for future research to combine multiple wisdom measurements, strengthen research on the psychological gender effect of wisdom, and focus on the moderating role of age on the relationship between wisdom and gender.

Does pre-voting group deliberation improve majority outcomes? To address this question, we develop a probabilistic model of opinion formation and deliberation. Two new jury theorems, one pre-deliberation and one post-deliberation, suggest that deliberation is beneficial. Successful deliberation mitigates three voting failures: (1) overcounting widespread evidence, (2) neglecting evidential inequality, and (3) neglecting evidential complementarity. Formal results and simulations confirm this. But we identify four systematic exceptions where deliberation reduces majority competence, always by in...

ABSTRACT While there have been many advances in the psychology of wisdom in the last 30 years, mainstream research has yet to take into serious account the role of religion in developing wisdom. Instead, the majority of research has focused on the influence of age or life experience. To examine the relative contributions of faith, age, and personal wisdom to participants understanding of how wisdom develops, the narratives of 16 participants, 8 scoring high on the Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale and 8 scoring low, from 2 age cohorts (18–25 and 60–85) and 4 religious backgrounds (Atheist, Buddhi...

This article is the first interdisciplinary study of excavated early modern lute, a paste that alchemists wrapped around vessels, contextualising its relevance for the history of science. We explore the material epistemology of the alchemical laboratory by opening a conversation between archaeological sciences and the history of the body, medicine, and science. In an age that valued embodied epistemologies, we argue, medicine mattered for cultures of making and affected alchemists’ material practices. This article combines the scientific analysis of luted glass remains from the sixteenth cen...

PurposeThis conceptual paper aims to contribute to the knowledge management (KM) literature by seeking to determine whether wisdom management (WM) will replace KM in future.Design/methodology/approachThis exploratory paper follows the interpretivist research philosophy and the deductive approach. The data collection is based on selected literatures from three disciplines (KM, philosophy and psychology). The findings were qualitatively analysed.FindingsThe findings are threefold: (1) the discussion of wisdom has been either neglected or superficially discussed in the KM literature; (2) despite ...

Psalms scholars from the last century have grappled with the question of whether “Wisdom psalms” exist as a distinctive type of psalms, and if so, what criteria should be used to define them. This essay offers an overview of various answers to these questions by drawing on form-critical observations on Wisdom psalms as well as the insights from those who cultivate the “shape and shaping” discussions of the Hebrew Psalter. In addition to these traditional studies, recent works suggest more flexible or modified concepts of genre as ways to identify Wisdom psalms and correlate wisdom with torah a...

This book explores the manner in which Herman Melville responds to the spiritual crisis of modernity by using the language of the biblical Old Testament wisdom books to moderate contemporary discourses on religion, skepticism, and literature. Melville’s work is an example of how romantic literature fills the interpretive lacuna left by contemporary theology. This book argues that attending to Melville’s engagement with the wisdom books (Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes) can help us understand a paradox at the heart of American modernity: the simultaneous displacement and affirmation of biblical...

This essay proposes a set of strategies to guide physicians in achieving a thorough understanding of individual cases and their constituent particulars, a proposal informed by extensive experiences in the clinic and classroom and by a review of the literature, and enriched by consultations with colleagues from multiple disciplines in medicine and the humanities.

Especially in the domains of business and management, it is vital that Intelligence as well as AI are to be taken good care of, directed and controlled by Wisdom and Artificial Wisdom, inclusive by Artificial Wisdom :AW.

Psychological reflections based on the film “The Wisdom of Trauma” directed by Maurizio Benazzo and Zaya Benazzo and released in 2021. The story presented in the documentary shows the fragility of a person’s life with the experience of trauma. Professionals working with addicts explain what the wisdom of trauma is, how people and their bodies cope with traumatic experiences, and what suffering brings to the lives of those in need of support.

This essay offers a novel framework for the definition of biblical wisdom as a genre by suggesting self-presentation as a key to understanding the genre’s dynamics. By framing the material as sapiential, the authors/editors provide a hermeneutical tool for readers, based on a set of shared conventions. Forming the scarlet thread of the genre, this »self-identification« is »thickened« by a set of fluid features – many of which are related to the labile conventions associated with the wise. This spinal cord links later works to the tradition even when expectations change.

The reflection of traditional Indian medicine as described in Firdous al-Hikmah is discussed and its influence on later medical texts is discussed.

This chapter provides two primary illustrations of this preventive ethic, the 19th-century revelation known as the “Word of Wisdom” and 20th- and 21st-century advocacy of vaccinations.

Chapter three addresses the texts of the Apocrypha related to Jewish wisdom. In ancient Israel wisdom was associated with Proverbs and the education of elite males, especially scribes. But there were important developments in wisdom, each phase expanding on the previous one without rendering it obsolete. The wisdom texts of the Apocrypha are analyzed both in terms of how they fit within the earlier history of wisdom genres, and how they reflect the changes of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Theological themes such as revelation are expanded within these texts, and social issues such as gend...

In this response to Pritchard’s “In Defence of Veritism”, I defend the view that it is wisdom rather than truth that is fundamental in epistemology. Given that recent philosophical discussions of the nature of wisdom may be unfamiliar to some epistemologists, a brief overview of these discussions is provided and that which is relevant for the subsequent discussion in this piece is highlighted. I explain that scholars working on the topic tend to accept that wisdom comprises at least one familiar epistemic standing and that, unlike other epistemic goods, wisdom is thought to be tied to a narrow...

One would expect to see points of contact between the Israelite Wisdom Literature preserved in the Bible and the other components of that collection. Scholars have proposed Wisdom influence in books from most parts of the biblical corpus, including the Pentateuch, the Deuteronomistic History, the Psalms, and the Prophets. This essay proposes three criteria for evaluating such proposals and demonstrates their application to specific texts. The results range from no evidence of actual Wisdom influence to clear cases of direct influence from Israel’s Wisdom traditions on other types of biblical l...

This article focuses on innate Wisdom located in nature by the wise, the scientists of the Wisdom school of the ancient Near East. In the Wisdom Manifesto of Job 28, God is portrayed as a Wisdom scientist who searches the face of Earth and “discerns” Wisdom in the forces of nature. In this school of thought, all living creatures and all domains of nature possess the innate “way” of Wisdom that determines their character. On his tour of the cosmos, Job is guided to discern Wisdom in all domains of the cosmos. In Proverbs 8, God acquires Wisdom as the primal blueprint for designing the cosmos. I...

Current definitions of “Wisdom” for ancient Egypt often suffer from the influence of categories developed for the Hebrew Bible. Applying emic categories leads instead to a focus on instructions, which have a clear Egyptian term (sbꜣy.t). They are typically stylized as the teaching of a son by his father and authorized by the indication of name and title of the teacher. Often a prologue indicates the setting of the teaching more closely. Some historical development can be recognized, but at the same time, there are also contemporary compositions with different outlooks and social settings. For ...

Though she does not put it in these terms, Specker Sullivan’s (2022) article is an important and timely reminder that bioethics is a branch of philosophy; that philosophy is, literally, philo-sophy—the love of wisdom; that wisdom cannot be crystallized in algorithms; and that (as articulated particularly in Buddhism and Eastern Christianity) there is a crucial circularity: Wise thinking results from wise living and wise living results from wise thinking. Modern bioethics is embarrassed by talk of wisdom. Wisdom seems suspiciously religious, and is hard to define, locate, measure, and teach. It...

A large-scale comparison of 58 prominent models of risky choice, using 19 existing behavioral datasets involving more than 800 participants, suggests that each model captures unique aspects of the decision process, and that existing risky choice models offer complementary rather than competing accounts of behavior.

Wisdom has long fascinated philosophers and theologians, hailed by many as the key to human flourishing and the pinnacle of human development. From this perspective its relevance to coaching seems indisputable, if somewhat aspirational. At the same time, we are facing some of the most demanding challenges humans have collectively faced. Leaders face ill-defined problems requiring an ability to embrace uncertainty, to engage in foresight, thinking both long-term and systemically towards the common good. In this high stakes context, accessing wiser reasoning ‘in time’ and developing wisdom ‘over...

This chapter introduces the volume by arguing that the study of biblical wisdom is in the midst of a potential paradigm shift, as interpreters are beginning to reconsider the relationship between the concept of wisdom in the Bible and the category Wisdom Literature. This offers an opportunity to explore how the two have been related in the past, in the history of Jewish and Christian interpretation, how they are connected in the present, as three competing primary approaches to Wisdom study have developed, and how they could be treated in the future, as new possibilities for understanding wisd...

We study the voting game where agents' preferences are endogenously decided by the information they receive, and they can collaborate in a group. We show that strategic voting behaviors have a positive impact on leading to the "correct" decision, outperforming the common non-strategic behavior of informative voting and sincere voting. Our results give merit to strategic voting for making good decisions. To this end, we investigate a natural model, where voters' preferences between two alternatives depend on a discrete state variable that is not directly observable. Each voter receives a privat...

Wisdom connects to nursing’s theoretical conceptualizations and informs the why and value of the nursing discipline.

Wisdom of the Crowd is the aggregation of many individual estimates to obtain a better collective one. This effect has an enormous potential from the social point of view, as it means that a decision may be taken more effectively by vote among a large crowd than by a small minority of experts. Wisdom of the Crowd has been demonstrated in a wide range of cognitive tasks, all of which involve rational thinking. Here we tested this effect in the context of drawing simple geometrical shapes which, while still enacting cognitive processes, mainly involved visuo-motor control. We asked more than 700...

Wisdom teeth, officially known as “third molars,” are one to four permanent teeth that come in at the ends of the rows of upper and lower teeth.

One of the most controversial notions in Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man is the distinction between true and false needs. In this commentary, I suggest that Marcuse’s distinction is ambiguous between two readings, which I term the Repression Reading and the Heteronomy Reading, respectively. I argue that considerations from Maiese and Hanna’s (2019) notion of the Mind Shaping Thesis can help to see why we ought to reject the Heteronomy Reading in favor of the Repression Reading of false needs. I then suggest that the Repression Reading of false needs can, in turn, reveal some weaknesses i...

This article examines two values that have long motivated work in economic anthropology: the value of denunciatory critique and the value of thinking otherwise. Through a retrospective analysis of research that I have conducted on consumer debt in Brazil, I offer two different versions of that research based on whether the story is driven by the first value of denunciation or by the second of thinking otherwise. In doing so, I suggest ways to address the limitations of both anthropology focused on denunciatory critique and the more recent development of an “anthropology of the good” by outlini...

At the angle of "loving wisdom",the premise of comprehending philosophy is what is "wisdom" must be made clear.Wisdom itself should also be understood and grasped at the angle of history,semantics and the relation of knowledge,talent and wisdom.Wisdom is not philosophy,and philosophic wisdom is different from commonsensible and scientific wisdom.Philosophic wisdom is "the great wisdom",the survival wisdom,the "acid" wisdom and the spiritual horizon.Based on the fact of "wisdom is lacked","the restoration of wisdom" and "the returning to the root of philosophic wisdom" should be returned to the...

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British labor historians carry in their heads and into their research a very heavy historiographical burden—a set of major questions which have dominated the field for a long time and a related set of model answers and analyses. These questions and proposed solutions were put forth in the first instance by social and political theorists, ranging from Marx and Engels in the nineteenth century to Lenin, the Webbs, and more recent theorists like Neil Smelser in the twentieth century. A generation of brilliant social historians, including Eric Hobsbawm, Edward Thompson, Royden Harrison, and others...

The globalization wave has caused Indonesians to gradually lose and forget the values of local wisdom as the nation's assets and charm. The global community recognizes Indonesia as a society characterized by positive traits such as friendliness, courtesy, industriousness, altruism, openness, courage, and others. Initial observations at the State Islamic Institute of Palopo indicate that lecturers perceive that most students have lost the original character of the Indonesian nation. Implementing character education aligned with local wisdom values can address this issue. The research employed i...

Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence (ML/AI) concept based on predefined events and user profiles provides the context of OWL toolset solution lifecycle, enabling additional value to customer experience during node or equipment maintenance.

Two major strands articulating wisdom in Jewish theology appeared in the Middle Ages: the philosophical and the mystical. The greatest philosophical account of wisdom appears right at the end of The Guide for the Perplexed, by Maimonides. Maimonides offers an analytic treatment of verses from the book of Proverbs and uses of wisdom elsewhere in the Jewish Bible to set out wisdom as a distinct and valued human virtue. The greatest mystical treatment of wisdom appears in The Zohar, a tremendous Kabbalistic exposition of the Pentateuch. In The Zohar, wisdom is one of ten points of divine emanatio...

: Wisdom is a general psychological quality that integrates morality and intelligence. It is learned from life experiences, serves as an important symbol of successful aging, and is the ideal endpoint of human development. Research has shown that self-reported measurements, such as the three-dimensional wisdom scale (3D-WS), self-assessed wisdom scale (SAWS), and the adult self-transcendence inventory (ASTI), and performance measures such as the Berlin wisdom paradigm (BWP) and wise reasoning (WR), perform well in the assessment of older adults’ wisdom. The development of wisdom in old age is ...

This chapter provides an overview of Mesopotamian Wisdom Literature. The introduction discusses the origins and distribution of Mesopotamian Wisdom Literature. It moves on to demonstrate how Mesopotamian Wisdom Literature can be approached. The chapter treats four subcategories of Wisdom Literature: proverbs and instructions, Vanity Theme works, existential works, and satire and parody. The conclusion offers an assessment of the nature of Mesopotamian Wisdom Literature and refers to its transmission and diffusion to other literatures of the East Mediterranean basin, the ancient Near East, the ...

In recent years, the category of Wisdom Literature, primarily a designation for a type of biblical literature, has been applied to texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls. At the same time, the usefulness of Wisdom as a literary category has been questioned. This situation prompts us to examine why we have the category, what its limitations and problems are, and also to assess its value. Genre theory encourages us to understand the nature of Wisdom as a literary category, recognizing that it is not simply a taxonomic scheme but also an etic and constructed convention of reading. Employing this categor...

“Apocalyptic Literature” and “Wisdom Literature” are broad designations that represent widely recognized categories of inquiry in the fields of ancient Judaism, early Christianity, and beyond. The relationship between the two has been a prominent topic of study over the last five decades. Beyond their familiar connotations, one finds a complicated and contested relationship in recent scholarship on ancient Jewish and Christian literature. This article attempts to disambiguate both the terms and the recent history of research in order to highlight some of the most important progress made and so...

Much debate surrounds the alleged presence of wisdom in the Psalter. Many studies focus on the identity and nature of wisdom psalms. This approach remains controversial in that few interpreters agree on which psalms constitute wisdom psalms. This article argues that a preferable approach concentrates on the function of wisdom persons, terms and themes in shaping the Psalter. Key markers suggest that the final editors of the Psalter intended the book to be read and mastered as a wisdom writing by their placement of wisdom vocabulary, paragons and motifs as mnemonic benchmarks. These features in...

This article argues that the concept of wisdom in modern Christian theology, to be most effective, should draw on two dimensions of wisdom that are present within Hebrew Wisdom Literature. These are wisdom as careful observation of the world, and wisdom as participation in the presence of God in the world, the latter expressed in the personification of “Lady Wisdom.” These two aspects are reflected in the duality between practical wisdom (Aristotelian phronēsis) and sophia in Christian tradition, though for Christian theology participative wisdom will be engagement in the relational love of a ...

An expansive approach to the rabbinic interpretation of wisdom would entail comparing the rabbis’ diverse notions of wisdom with pre-rabbinic conceptions, while a more focused approach, and the one pursued here, approaches wisdom from a literary perspective. If we consider Wisdom as a literary genre or mode, Mishnah Avot emerges as a late member of the Wisdom literary trajectory, sharing salient features with earlier Wisdom Literature. In light of Avot’s presence on a literary continuum with ancient Hebrew Wisdom, I hope to show how Ben Sira’s Praise of the Fathers paved the way for various fe...

Phronesis, classically defined by Aristotle as knowledge of what is good and what is bad for humans, is best understood as practical wisdom, that is, the wisdom of action. The main difficulties in possessing phronesis and acting on it are that both human goods and ills come in degrees (so that it is hard to tell how much of the one is enough and how much of the other is too much) and that the goods frequently compete with each other (so that it is hard to determine which to pursue at the expense of the other). In the end, phronesis amounts to sound judgment and intuition in identifying the spe...

This chapter analyzes the wisdom tradition in the biblical Book of Proverbs, which goes back around the third century BCE. Wisdom emerged prior to the creation of the world, before the universe had taken on its final form. The chapter emphasizes that Wisdom is to be understood as a person and even enthroned on a cloud throne in heaven. But in contrast to Proverbs, Wisdom comes forth from the mouth of God and is obviously God's word, which is nevertheless interpreted as a person, since she lives in heaven, sits on a throne, compasses the heavenly and earthly vaults, and rules over the land, sea...