Wisdom (sapience)

Wisdom, or sapience, is often defined as the human ability to think with a combination of knowledge, experience, understanding, and good judgment. Because wisdom is an abstract concept, a definitive explanation is difficult to assess. Philosophers have debated the meaning of wisdom as far back as ancient Greece; Plato regarded wisdom as one of the four cardinal virtues, while eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant believed it was born from the human ability to reason. Modern psychologists have also struggled to reach a consensus on the meaning of wisdom. Most agree, however, that at its core, wisdom is a learned form of mental development tied to experience that increases with age. Scientists who study the human brain have found evidence to support that assessment. Research indicates that a balance in the activity between specific sections of the brain may be responsible for creating wisdom.

Background

Tracing the origin of wisdom in the human species is an impossible task. While wisdom is an outgrowth of intelligence, anthropologists have not been able to determine when intelligence developed in human ancestors. Some believe that intelligence equates to the development of stone tools—the oldest known examples dating back to about 3.3 million years. Humans are believed to have harnessed fire between 800,000 and 1.8 million years ago and developed more complex forms of language, art, and agriculture within the last 100,000 years. These evolutionary milestones may be viewed as a measure of intelligence, but they offer little insight into the development of wisdom.

The works of ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle were the first to discuss the concept of human wisdom. The word philosophy comes from the Greek philo, meaning "love of," and sophia, meaning "wisdom." In Plato's Republic, a literary dialogue written about 380 BCE, wisdom is one of the four main virtues found in the ideal state, which include justice, temperance, and courage. To Plato, wisdom was a person’s ability to judge their own actions as right or wrong. Aristotle, a student and contemporary of Plato, divided wisdom into two categories. Theoretical wisdom was considered scientific, definitive, and all-knowing, while practical wisdom was the pragmatic ability to determine one's own actions.

Seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes believed wisdom could be obtained by meditating on the world and viewing it with healthy skepticism and doubt. Wisdom is what is left, Descartes argued, when all doubt is removed. About a century later, German philosopher Immanuel Kant tied wisdom to the concept of reason—the ability of the mind to use logic in the process of thinking. Kant believed wisdom sprung from the practical use of reason and could be achieved using three methods. These were thinking for oneself, thinking of oneself in the position of someone else, and always thinking consistently with oneself.

Topic Today

Until the twentieth century, the idea of wisdom was relegated to the metaphysical field of philosophy. In the 1970s and 1980s, psychologists began to study the concept more scientifically. Early work in defining wisdom resulted in a number of different theories. Vivian Clayton, a graduate student at the University of Southern California, conducted a study that found wisdom to be a combination of thoughtful knowledge, reflection, and compassion. Research done by German psychologists Paul Baltes and Ursula Staudinger suggested wisdom resulted from having expertise and understanding of the human condition. According to their theory, a wise person knew what was most important in life and strove to attain it. In the United States, psychologist Robert Sternberg developed the balance theory of wisdom, positing that people demonstrate wisdom by using their intelligence, common sense, and knowledge for the common good.

A paper published in 2009 by neuroscientists Thomas Meeks, Dilip Jeste, and other researchers at the University of California, San Diego, surveyed thirty experts in the field of psychology asking their definitions of wisdom, intelligence, and spirituality. The survey was part of a clinical study of how the brain acquires wisdom as it ages. While there were some differences in opinion, the results yielded a strong consensus on the definition of wisdom. The experts felt that wisdom is a trait found only in humans and is a form of mental development driven by life experience. While it is a relatively rare quality, it can be learned, measured, and increased with age. It also cannot be enhanced through medication.

Scientists have long known that most brain functions reach a peak about age twenty-five to thirty and then begin to decline. As this happens, most mental functions slow down, affecting the brain's capacity for memory, multitasking, and organization. The functions of reasoning and cognition—acquiring knowledge through thought—do not decrease, but continue to improve until reaching a peak between the ages of forty and fifty. These functions stay stable for most of the remaining years of life, and only begin to deteriorate in extreme old age. As a result, older individuals may not be able to acquire new information as quickly, but they maintain and better understand what they have learned.

According to research by Meeks and Jeste, wisdom may originate in a combination of specific brain regions—the limbic system and sections of the prefrontal cortex. The limbic system is an older area of the brain that primarily oversees emotional behavior and basic instinctual drives, such as hunger and nurturing. The prefrontal cortex is a more recently evolved area of the brain. One section, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, governs reasoning, decision-making, and self-preservation. Another section, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, is associated with kindness and social behavior. The researchers theorize that wisdom may result from balanced activity between these sections of the brain. A person governed by the more selfish human instincts, for example, would think only of themself and hamper the ability of the human species to survive; while someone driven by more social instincts would devote too much attention to others and endanger their own survival. A balance between the sections, the study suggests, forms wisdom and is necessary for human survival.

In a multilevel meta-analysis, researchers examined wisdom’s correlation with age, intelligence, narcissism, self-esteem, social desirability, and well-being. Wisdom was defined using a self-report measure and an observer-reported measure. Individuals with higher wisdom scores also had higher scores of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being and openness to new experiences.

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