Synopsis
This book argues for the need to put into practice a profound and comprehensive intellectual revolution, affecting to a greater or lesser extent all branches of scientific and technological research, scholarship and education. This intellectual revolution differs, however, from the now familiar kind of scientific revolution described by Kuhn. It does not primarily involve a radical change in what we take to be knowledge about some aspect of the world, a change of paradigm. Rather it involves a radical change in the fundamental, overall intellectual aims and methods of inquiry. At present inquiry is devoted to the enhancement of knowledge. This needs to be transformed into a kind of rational inquiry having as its basic aim to enhance personal and social wisdom. This new kind of inquiry gives intellectual priority to the personal and social problems we encounter in our lives as we strive to realize what is desirable and of value - problems of knowledge and technology being intellectually subordinate and secondary. For this new kind of inquiry, it is what we do and what we are that ultimately matters: our knowledge is but an aspect of our life and being. Many of our present-day social and global problems are in part due to our long-standing failure to develop such a tradition of genuinely rational, socially active thought, devoted to the growth of wisdom. This basic Socratic idea has been betrayed, and as a result, to put it at its most extreme, we now stand on the brink of self-destruction. In the circumstances, there can scarcely be any more urgent task for all those associated in any way with the academic enterprise - scientists, technologists, scholars, teachers, administrators, students, parents, providers of funds - than to help put into practice the new kind of inquiry, rationally devoted to the growth of wisdom.
About the Author
Nicholas Maxwell has devoted much of his working life to arguing that we need to bring about a revolution in academia so that it comes to seek and promote wisdom and does not just acquire knowledge. Apart from the present book, he has published four others on this theme: What's Wrong With Science? (Bran's Head Books, 1976), The Comprehensibility of the Universe (Oxford University Press, 1998), The Human World in the Physical Universe (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001) and Is Science Neurotic? (Imperial College Press, 2004). He has also contributed to a number of other books, and has published numerous papers in science and philosophy journals on problems that range from consciousness to quantum theory. For nearly thirty years he taught philosophy of science at University College London, where he is now Emeritus Reader in Philosophy of Science and Honorary Senior Research Fellow. He has given lectures at Universities and Conferences all over Britain, Europe and north America, and has taken part in the BBC Programme `Start the Week' on Radio 4.
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