By assigning little value to activities that involve learning about nature and by denigrating the individual as “worldly,” organized religion has, for many centuries, entertained a prejudice against the “art” of survival.  That the individual, as a result of such prejudice, has been taught to consider himself an outcast is an injustice.

A basic premise of religion is that wisdom is not of this earth, that the truly wise man repudiates this earth.  The closer to a hermit he lives, the more worthy he is of God’s grace.  Certainly, there are deeper mysteries in the universe, but they can only provide value to man if they also provide benefit, achieve some tangible result.  Excuse me for being materialistic, but in my view, a wise man that cannot lift a finger must certainly not have been wise enough to know the value of a healthy body and a physical capability. 

As free men, are we responsible for deciding how we will use our minds?  Do we not then want the best that wisdom has attained?  That choice will impact us positively or negatively dependent upon the quality of our thinking.  If we survive well, that is no sign of baseness.  If we do not develop our minds, we will be forced, like religious leaders, to manipulate others to provide sustenance. 

What is wisdom then?  Certainly, it is something good to have, something that distinguishes the individual from others.  When we consider a person wise, do we consider that he has gained enough knowledge that he must be cared for by others?  Then a person far advanced in age who has lost physical capacity must truly be wise.  If not this, then a wise person is someone whose knowledge is deemed beneficial to others, someone articulate and able to communicate good thoughts in an artful way.  That would make wisdom a collective accomplishment, and we know how fickle and sometimes ignorant the collective can be. 

Surprisingly, Plato in his Epinomis, considered that wisdom was our ability to measure the heavens.  In this view, the heavens were “God” and their gift to man was that he had to learn to measure the movements of the planets and stars and thereby attain numbers.  This seems like a “scientific” basis for God, or at least it implies that “God” gave us science and that thinking scientifically, the ability to quantify nature and think in terms of abstractions that are tied directly to nature, was the height of wisdom.  I find this a strange thing for an idealist like Plato to say:

“And I must explain who it is that I believe to be God, though he be a strange one, and somehow not strange either: for why should we not believe the cause of all the good things that are ours to have been the cause also of what is far the greatest, understanding? And who is it that I magnify with the name of God, Megillus and Cleinias? Merely Heaven, which it is most our duty to honor and pray to especially, as do all other spirits and gods. That it has been the cause of all the other good things we have, we shall all admit; that it likewise gave us number we do really say, and that it will give us this hereafter, if we will but follow its lead. For if one enters on the right theory about it, whether one be pleased to call it World-order or Olympus or Heaven – let one call it this or that, but follow where, in bespangling itself and turning the stars that it contains, it produces all their courses and the seasons and food for all. And thence, accordingly, we have understanding in general, we may say, and therewith all number, and all other good things: but the greatest of these is when, after receiving its gift of numbers, one has covered the whole circuit.”[1]

His proof?  “…that of the properties of the other arts, which we recounted just now in granting the existence of all the arts, not a single one can remain, but all of them are utterly defective, when once you remove numeration.”[2]

Is it not true then that the person that develops an ability to accomplish in the real world a tangible result, must do so be means of measuring the universe (or the things of the world at the very least), and that the better this person is at measurement, quantification of reality or induction, the more successful he is in manipulating that reality for the sake of benefiting life?  We have a contradiction in Plato’s philosophy.  The idea of understanding numbers – that means measuring and knowing the real world, that base world that is inferior to Plato– is considered by Plato, who is almost the father of religion, to be the height of wisdom.

Animals have survived on this earth, along with man, and many creatures have managed to survive well; not as well as man, but well enough to perpetuate themselves.  How is it, then that they have done it?  Don’t they calculate day and night, the comings and goings of predators, the best places for havens of safety, and the best methods for hunting and overpowering prey?  We could say that nature, or evolution, has provided them, over time with the “tools” of survival, the physical capabilities that enable them to survive “mindlessly” without numbers – and only the countless repetitions that come from planetary movements such as light and dark which man calls habit.  Are they not equally wise then?  One would have to say ‘No,” simply because they did it mindlessly.

What is the standard of wisdom?  I believe that a wise man (or woman) is one that is able to measure the value and import of ideas, and by a process of reason (measurement), help us live better and with more ease.  But more than this, he is a person who makes a decision to entertain, as a matter of habit, higher thoughts and more abstract thinking.  He is a person who investigates the world and makes generalizations about the universe from that investigation.  He appreciates Newton and totally avoids primitive tribes.  He is a person who builds his own computer within his mind.  A wise man is not a praying mystic but a thinker and a man of action, one that knows which ideas work and which do not.  A wise man is a Pythagoras who probably invented logic, or at least learned the art of measurement from the Egyptians, took it to a new level and contributed to our age.  A wise man is an Aristotle who held to the validity of the senses and the ability of man to gain knowledge and live a “noble” life.  A wise man is not one that measures the wrath of God but the love of life.

So, in my view, a wise man is one of advanced knowledge about important matters.  He is the man of broad abstractions who thinks, self-consciously, in terms of concepts, epistemological validity and grand scale principles.  Others are able to learn what the wise man has learned and use it to benefit themselves – to become equally wise as long as they understand how the wise man arrived at his conclusions.  For what is intelligence but the ability of man to measure and to use that measurement to make decisions on what to do, what to make and how to use it – to assist in the advancement of a human purpose. 

Conclusions require evidence and evidence requires measurement.  Purposeful action is measured activity assisted by validated knowledge.  For Plato this would have meant measuring the stars and then deciding when to plant the crop based upon the best season.  For him the stars were the Gods and their decisions on planetary motions required that man ascertain the regularity of those motions in order to survive.  This was the use of human intelligence that provided the foundation for human knowledge and advanced civilization.  So Plato, like his predecessor Pythagoras, was right in this sense: numbers are everything.  We use numbers as an extension of our sight in order to ascertain truths about nature and make countless decisions: what material will make an airplane fly faster?  What numbering system will make a computer more efficient?  And so on and so forth to the stars.

Knowledge, then, is a verified, measured truth, a fact that can be used as a premise upon which a grand generalization can be constructed.  A grand generalization is more than a “broad” generalization, it is a principle that spans the universe of ideas and teaches us about the vast panorama of existence.  Knowledge is the foundation of correct action.  Man derives tangible benefit from his knowledge and the wise man is the man that is able to perceive, to measure, to conclude and then to act. 

Wisdom sounds like a pretty profitable endeavor to me, but then “profit” is one of those base “economic” terms that has nothing to do with the wisdom of the ancients, right?  And this is where I think religion and religious cultural dominance has led us astray.  By placing wisdom in the world of the ineffable and by placing “moral” action in the realm of “the fear of God,” organized religion has given us an unwise perspective on wisdom.  The consequence is intelligent and competent men who do not know that they are wise, who suffer indignity and loss of self-respect because they are considered evil and prideful by the society and the religion they support.  Why feed your executioner?  Do you hear me Michael Gates?

[1] Epinomis, Jowett translation

[2] Ibid

 Posted on 6/23/04