The inscription translates as "I shall destroy the wisdom of the wise".

Who were the wise?

The wise were scientists and philosophers who thought that knowledge could be acquired through observation of phenomena, engaging in inductive reasoning to make general statements about the phenomena, and then moving through to increasing higher levels of generality to form what we now call theories.

From theories testable hypotheses could be derived which the "wise" would seek to falsify or disprove in experiments.

Hypotheses not falsified (disproven) added to the credibility of the theory (or modified it in certain ways).

This became "the scientific method" and its application has helped all branches of science to progress.

Aquinas knew this was wrong; the church said so and taught so.

Knowledge did not come from reasoning; it came from God. And God said that the sun went around the Earth whatever the observations of "scientists" might say to the contrary. They were blasphemers and heretics, people whose views had to be expunged from society lest they corrupt more people.

Fortunately, we don't accept Aquinas's theory of knowledge anymore (nor his cosmology).

However, since at least the 1930s we have seen much pseudo-science; findings that seem to have the trappings of genuine inquiry but on close examination are not fully in accordance with the principles of the scientific method.

The late Professor Sir Karl Popper assailed the propagators of such work as perverting science and thought their aims were ideological, not scientific.

He reserved particular contempt for Marxists and their fellow travellers who wanted to use science for propaganda, not for education or learning, or to promote freedom (see The Open Society and its Enemies).

Misuse of science and intellectual falsehoods in the name of "truth" and "for the greater good" undermined democratic values and open debate, he argued.

These days there is a lot of "this is the official line, which shall not be questioned, and is indeed unquestionable because the science is settled". For ‘‘science'' equally read ‘'history" or ‘'truth''.

I don't think that nutters and people who are plainly wrong should be allowed free rein to peddle complete nonsense which could alarm the public, but I am not sure I want to be overly vigorous about stamping out their views. Continue reading

• John Bishop is an experienced journalist across all media, business, economics, politics features, and profiles. He also has an interest in travel and writes at www.eatdrinktravel.co.nz

Information is very important.

But on its own information is not wisdom.

It isn't even knowledge until it is properly sifted and researched.

Wisdom is the ability to discern and judge how knowledge applies in ways that are right and lasting and worthwhile. "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad." (Anon.)

The transformation of information into knowledge and wisdom is a process.

It needs time, experience and reflection.

It also needs silence and stillness - a break from busyness and noise.

Sometimes it helps to turn off the flow of information coming into us, leaving time to think about what has already come.

Wisdom is a kind of meeting place.

It is enshrined in people's experiences, histories and cultures, and so through respectful listening to one another we are able to journey together into better understandings, and explore together the bigger questions of life.

It is where people's differences can belong, and through dialogue be enriching.

It presupposes that "no one is an island".

In the scriptures, wisdom has a practical bent: it's about living a good life, personal virtue and social responsibility.

It is a divine gift, and gives us insight into God's will.

Jesus insisted on fulfilling the law - but according to the true meaning of law.

He did not allow people to use the law against the purpose of the law.

After some Pharisees had criticized Jesus for healing on the Sabbath day, he reminded them that "the sabbath was made for people, not people for the sabbath".

The purpose of "the law," including the commandments, is to protect underlying values.

As we gradually identify with those values, we are already fulfilling the purpose of the law; the law becomes less of a constraint on us; we are already "at home" with what the law stands for.

Fulfilling the underlying purpose of the law is life-giving.

Psalm 103, gives us a helpful starting place for becoming wise:

Before the mountains were born,
before the earth or the world came to be,
you were God from all eternity and forever...

To your eyes a thousand years
are like yesterday, come and gone,
no more than a watch in the night...

Make us know the shortness of our life
that we may gain wisdom of heart...
Our days are like grass:
like flowers of the field we blossom,
the wind blows over us and we are gone,
our place knows us no more.

But the Lord's kindness is forever...

• +Peter Cullinane was the first bishop of the Diocese of Palmerston North. Now retired he continues to be a respected writer and leader of retreats and is still busy at local, national, and international levels. Here he shares his reflections on sciences and Christian faith. To conclude the introduction of this series he quotes Albert Einstein, "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind."
• This is the eighth in a series of chapters from his letter to senior students
• Image: Manawatu Standard

Most of the news is focussed on welfare issues, while increased advertising suggests there is money to be made retirement villages, rest homes and funerals. Very little is said about the gifts of wisdom that can come only with a life fully lived.

Most of the advantages of getting old are emotional, intellectual and spiritual. Most of the disadvantages are physical. Because the physical tends to demand more attention, we don't always appreciate what we have gained through the aging process. Let's look at some of the benefits.

1. We've spent many years in Life School and our experience is a part of our faith. We have come to a deeper place where we see God in everything. There is no separation. The world is full of God.

2. We know that while the head has language, the heart has no words, only feeling. We have learned that words are not idols to be worshipped: they are signposts that lead us to the heart space. Here there is a knowing of God that fills us with freedom and peace.

3. We are comfortable with the way we are made, and are not bothered by public opinion. The incidents that used to bother us, now seem trivial, almost laughable.

4. We have learned that insecurity and doubt are not enemies but good friends of wisdom. Both allow us to grow. The security and certainty we once sought, have tended to prevent growth.

5. We value the beauty of lectio divina, especially in the gospels when we walk with our Lord. In the company of Jesus, the words cease to be "law" and become "life," meeting our every need.

6. We value our uniqueness, aware that God has formed us as individuals and continues to do so. We have let go of the need to be like others, or to see them as like us.

7. Judgement and division belong to the smallness of human understanding. We know that God's love is much bigger than human ideas, and that no one is ever lost to that love. In our thinking, we avoid making God too small.

8. We live in an understanding of paradox, knowing the strength in weakness, the richness of poverty, the fullness of emptiness, the gain that comes from loss, the resurrections that follow our little crucifixions. We have learned to trust that the lessons in life school have all been for our spiritual growth.

9. When we were young we had a lot of questions about life. Maybe we didn't get the answers we wanted; but now the questions themselves have disappeared. In life of faith, those questions seem irrelevant.

10. Our faith has become much simpler. It is all held in three words: God is love.

11. We no longer identify with our bodies. They are like coats we've worn for many years. They have served us well but now they are getting old and threadbare. When they no longer serve us, we will discard them and return to the love for which we were made.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

We, who have grown away from that clear-sighted state, are sometimes surprised back to it, by a simple comment from a child.

My son Edward once stared at his grandfather's ashtray decorated with the three "wise" monkeys. He pointed to the monkey with its hands over its eyes and wanted to know what it was doing.

I hesitated, wondering how to explain the concept of Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.

I did my best.

"This little monkey can't see anything that is bad."

Edward frowned. "But Mum, he wouldn't be able to see anything!"

I was silent.

Theology training from a four year old!

Another lesson came from six years old Judith who knew that God was everywhere.

When her school friend questioned this, Judith explained that it was easy to understand. "God is everywhere like the air. You just breathe God in."

A teacher friend, Maria Josef RNDM, is another who told her class God was in everything.

One windy Canterbury day, she took them for a walk and they paused on a small rise, looking down on a paddock of wind-combed grass.

One of the boys, overcome by the view, shouted, "Look at all that God!"

Sr Maria shared this story 30 years ago, and ever since it has been my automatic response to the beauty of creation.

Look at all that God!

I could not create a more effective prayer.

With the assistance of children I frequently remember Jesus' words that we must become as little children to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Neil Douglas Klotz, a student of ancient Aramaic, says the expression Kingdom of Heaven would be translated today as Enlightenment.

That is probably true but I think that become is the key word.

It's a circular process. We don't remain as little children but embark on a long journey of spiritual growth that takes us back to simplicity.

This is expressed in an old traditional story.

When we are young, a tree is simply a tree. As we grow, we learn that a tree is made up of roots, trunk, branches, leaves. We then divide it further, see a tree made up of cellular tissue: xylem, phloem, cambium layer, stomata. We study photosynthesis and transpiration.

Finally, it all comes together and once again a tree is simply a tree. But now we know what it is like to be a tree.

I think this is what Jesus meant by "becoming as little children."

Six year olds in Sacred Heart School, Wellington, were asked to write prayers of gratitude to God for some gift that was important to them. A boy wrote this:

"Thank you, God, for words so we can say thank you."

Doesn't that put all our learning into one simple statement?

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

On March 15, 1884, Leo Tolstoy, wrote in his diary:

"I have to create a circle of reading for myself: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal, The New Testament. This is also necessary for all people."

So he set out to compile "a wise thought for every day of the year, from the greatest philosophers of all times and all people" — aflorilegium five centuries after the golden age of florilegia and a Tumblr a century and a half before the golden age of Tumblr, a collection of famous words on the meaning of life long before the concept had become a cultural trope.

The following year, he wrote to his assistant, describing the project:

"I know that it gives one great inner force, calmness, and happiness to communicate with such great thinkers as Socrates, Epictetus, Arnold, Parker. … They tell us about what is most important for humanity, about the meaning of life and about virtue. … I would like to create a book … in which I could tell a person about his life, and about the Good Way of Life."

Tolstoy spent the next seventeen years collecting those pieces of wisdom.

In 1902, in his late seventies, seriously ill and confronting mortality, he finally sat down to write the book under the working title A Wise Thought for Every Day. Once he sent the manuscript to his publisher, he returned to the diary and exhaled:

"I felt that I have been elevated to great spiritual and moral heights by communication with the best and wisest people whose books I read and whose thoughts I selected for my Circle of Reading." Continue reading

Sources

• brain pickings
• Image: The Telegraph

Yet even though most of us recognise that being wise is entirely different from other markers of success — such as being rich or famous or even a genius — wisdom is a difficult quality to define.

Do we truly understand what it takes to be wise?

Ursula M. Staudinger has spent decades thinking about wisdom.

As a student in Germany, she became interested in looking at people's life experiences in an empirical way.

Her studies led her to the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, where in the 1980s she joined several other prominent psychologists on the Berlin Wisdom Project, helping to pioneer the field of wisdom studies.

Today, she is director of the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center at Columbia University.

Wisdom, as she recently told The New York Times, consists of "self-insight; the ability to demonstrate personal growth; self-awareness in terms of your historical era and your family history; understanding that priorities and values, including your own, are not absolute; and an awareness of life's ambiguities."

Sound like a lot? If there's one thing Staudinger has learned while studying wisdom, it's that not a lot of people have it.

But her work has yielded many insights into how we can set ourselves on the path to wisdom, if we really want to. Continue reading.

Source: Huffington Post

Image: Mansfield College