Don Boudreaux on Wisdom

Don Boudreaux, Chairman of GMU's econ department, shares his thoughts on wisdom:

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Contrarians run great risks of rejecting some piece of wisdom simply because it is widely accepted -- and of confusing the possible for the plausible.

I very much like Dietrich Bonhoeffer's definition of widsom: "To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom." Not all facts are significant, and most facts come at us in a barrage, raw and unsifted. Knowledge and smarts are important tools to use in organizing facts and in distinguishing the more-relevant and reliable ones from the less-relevant and unreliable ones. But that elusive quality that we call wisdom is also key. Because wisdom is not (in my opinion, anyway) highly correlated with cleverness -- unless, perhaps, negatively -- and because being contrarian is highly correlated with cleverness, I fear that too many contarians are content to bask in the brilliance of their cleverness even if this brilliance blinds them to wisdom.

But to be contrarian for a moment, I point out that Abelard said that "The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth."

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Speaking of wisdom, I need to get back to the books! Only four days left until prelims!