A doctor of philosophy degree wherein one knows more and more about less and less. The key is the word philosophy, meaning “love of wisdom,” whereas doctorate simply implies the highest degree (of). But seriously, what is wisdom? Or knowledge (shouldn’t all degreed individuals possess knowledge)? And where do information and data fit in?


In my experience, the lowest form of education involves the memorization of data. Having a storehouse of data at one’s fingertips used to be a major asset. BC (meaning here before computers). These days, memorized data, which used to be essentially sensory qualities (like red, hard, salty or loud) and numbers (like 1, 33.3 and at the more intellectual end an imaginary number or the numerical equivalent of the Greek pi), have little place in the contemporary world, as the quality isn’t typically quantified and the number isn’t qualified. It’s at the information level that memory still plays a central role. Information is to data like the “average human body temperature across a lifetime” is to 98.6. That is, information is essentially meaningful data.


The next level up is, I believe, knowledge, where knowledge is information that one can use or at least apply correctly in a different situation. For example, it’s great to know the calculus. It’s a step up if one cal use the calculus to determine how much fertilizer one needs to purchase for a particular garden. Or exactly when and how to land a remote lander sitting on top of a rocket at Kennedy Space and Flight Center in a particular place on the moon. Knowledge speaks to effectiveness and efficiency, making it a valuable asset, but one that can easily go awry, like, for instance, applying information to make genocide more efficient and effective. Or brainwashing. Or consumer control.


The “final” level is wisdom, which, in my book, is knowing when to use one’s knowledge without hurting, meaning nascent lifeforms or non-living forms, individually or collectively. Of data, information, knowledge and wisdom, wisdom is the one that insures a “moral” outcome, and is the one, I believe, most missing from today’s world. Computers and artificial intelligence can help us with the first three, but isn’t able in our contemporary world to apply wisdom, especially in the humanitarian sense.


So a PhD is the highest degree of love for knowing when to use one’s knowledge without hurting, and an admirable and certainly much-needed attribute in all things human. In antithesis, it’s also the sound made by a silenced weapon.


Janik, D. S. Unlock the Genius Within: Neurobiological Trauma, Teaching and Transformative Learning (R&L Education 2005 ) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1578862914.


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