'Wisdom'

Development beyond 'Science' to 'Wisdom' (Part #6)

An immediate response to the deliberate complexification introduced in the previous section is that it exceeds the capacity of anyone (especially including this writer) even to delineate it adequately. The questions raised flow beyond the categories and structures which can normally be used to contain and order such considerations. They easily lend themselves to the accusation of being 'purely philosophical' or unrelated to the 'real problems' to which priorities should therefore be oriented. And yet no 'practical approach' can guarantee that its undertakings will not be out-maneuvered or nullified to the point of actually proving counter-productive - as has been demonstrated so many times over the past decades. The source of such strategic weakness is to be found in the more complex considerations on which it is apparently impossible to focus within any existing framework or by any existing process. Is it possible that Godels Theorem could be generalized to include problems of comprehension ?

The concept of the 'application of science and technology to development' reflects this weakness. As argued above it tends to be interpreted through poorly related substantive categories rather than processes. The level of 'contextual comprehension' required to see the interrelationship of such processes has been but poorly explored and is necessarily difficult if not impossible to communicate with available techniques (7, 8, 9). It is useful to explore the possibility that the attitude appropriate to this complexity is one of 'wisdom' - a term which has passed out of fashion with the rise of the specialised approach and the fragmentation of the family, despite the respect traditionally accorded to the elders. This attitude may perhaps be characterized as:

process (verb) rather than category (noun) oriented. Cf. David Bohm's concept of 'holocyclation' (10).
a level of comprehension beyond concern for knowledge of data elements and their interrelationship and an awareness of the function of different levels of comprehension. Clearly, for certain purposes, it is both obvious and appropriate to treat the earth as <. flat If; at another level it may be considered round and the sun understood as <* rising' over the horizon; and at another, the solar system as a whole may be considered as stationary; etc. In the same way *' development ,. and ** science ,. lend themselves to comprehension from different (but related) perspectives
a built-in sensitivity to values relating to human development in harmony with the development of (or respect for) the natural environment, from which it is only possible artificially to separate humanity
a strategy or action-oriented stance concerned to effect development in the above sense and aware of the consequences of the necessary risk-taking which calls into question the status and existence of the actor
a sensitivity to the issues raised by problems of comprehension and the difficulties of communicating whatever is comprehended
a sensitivity to the continuing education of those participating in any such exercise as a process which complicates the manner in which they function; participation is also a process of growth
a sensitivity to the weaknesses in any form of action, whether visible or only to be revealed by their future consequences or by opponents of the action. Clearly even the effort to establish such a list is presumptuous in the sense that it implies an ability to 'encompass' all these attitudes in their totality and to arrive at closure at a particular point in time - an ability which is called into question by the underlying attitude. Any attempt at defining wisdom necessarily fails to capture the attitude on which it is based for which the defining operation is but a particular tool (amongst several), each with recognised in-built limitations. '... there is another kind of limit which is built into the way in which the mind constructs reality. There is a limit inherent in the nature of explanation itself. Every description tries to be complete, but by the very nature of a description it cannot be total. A description is a limited thing; it is the map and not the territory. A description can only work because it is not the whole, and so it is a form of vision through blindness' (11, p. 149).

If its nature defies precise definition, perhaps wisdom can best be referred to as that 'standpoint' that consciously encompasse or embodies within itself, both the strengths through which it can act and the weaknesses which impede that action. 'Nihil humanum me alienum puto'. It is a conscious mirror of the condition it strives to supersede. ('Let me not be raised up until the world is raised up with me'). Wisdom would seem to internalise an image of the environment in all its aspects in order to be able to adopt a strategy acting out of a sense of that wholeness rather than of some part of it only. 'Tao is obscured when men understand only one of a pair of opposites, or concentrate only on a partial aspect of being. Then clear expression also becomes muddled by mere word-play, affirming this one aspect and denying all the rest... The wise man therefore, instead of trying to prove this or that point by logical disputation, sees all things in the light of direct intuition... The pivot of Tao passes through the Center where all affirmations and denials converge. He who grasps the pivot is at the still-point from which all movements and oppositions can be seen in their right relationship' (12, p.42-43)

In the light of Chinese taoist thought, wisdom would appear to be that type of awareness which 'moves with' (is 'in tune with', 'in harmony with', or 'transparent to') the flow of change and development- a sense of the 'tao' or wu wei non-action. ('The non-action of the wise man is not inaction... From emptiness comes the unconditioned. From this, the conditioned, the individual things. So from the sage's emptiness, stillness arises: From stillness, action. From action, attainment' (12, p.80). 'The wise man, then, when he must govern, knows how to do nothing' ( 1 2, p.7 1 )).

Wisdom would there be the attitude which engenders and is engendered by development. Conversely the essential nature of development can be most fully understood by those who are aware of flowing with it. This mode has been effectively contrasted with conventional western thinking, by Erich Jantsch (24). Numerous efforts at alluding to its elusive nature have been made in Zen sayings, for example, and in descriptions of 'non-action' as the 'emptiness' from which effective action should necessarily emerge. These reflect levels of comprehension on a continuum of progressively more subtle standpoints each giving rise to a more adequate pattern of action than the previous one, although the 'adequacy' is only apparent from subsequent standpoints, themselves inadequate from those preceding them.

The subtle relationships between such standpoints have, for example, been illustrated by two well-known series of 10 Zen 'ox-herding pictures' in which the ox may be interpreted as any (or all) objectified conditions(s) over which mastery is sought. The successive levels of comprehension of this task bear the following names in the Kaku-an series: searching for the ox; seeing the traces; seeing the ox; catching the ox; herding the ox; coming home on the ox's back; the ox forgotten, leaving the man alone; the ox and the man gone out of sight; returning to the origin, back to the source; entering the city with bliss bestowing hands (13, p.127-144). N.B. The 10 illustrations in this article are from another series.