SO OK WHAT ABOUT THIS THING WISDOM?

There are scattered across our planet sprinklings of desert retreats, mountain monasteries, island hideaways, and Tibetan caves where wise men and women go to be wise.

In contrast, there are scattered across this same world great metropolitan centers of learning, research, and laboratory investigation. The wise men and women here have opted to be in the middle of things rather than isolated from them.

That first corps has traditionally been in pursuit of great truths about Life; the second, more about Living. The first are usually labeled philosophers; the second, scientists. The first don't usually reject the works of science, but try to incorporate them; the second don't always judge the works of philosophy functional enough to incorporate. And so these two groups of wise people are regrettably in only occasional communication.

It wasn't always this way. In earlier times, the world's wise people considered philosophy and science to be simply different sides to the very same coin of life. Somehow along the way, we've sorta lost that sense of wholeness. In modern times, so many more facts, statistics, discoveries, theories -- we just had to start specializing. Only you have to wonder if by specializing we also had to departmentalize?

It's our specie's great good fortune to periodically produce those minds who can travel the paths of both philosophy and science, entranced with both the things beyond us and at the same time the things around us. In the West one thinks of a Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Newton, Leibniz, Spinoza, al-Biruni, Faraday, Darwin, Mendel, Einstein, Hawking, Chardin, Collins, Sagan, and that next college kid who will soon burst upon the world scene.

Eventually, any serious consideration of these rare fine minds has to tease out this question: What have they taught the rest of us mere mortals...? Surely, much more than can be summarized here. In fact, we mortals would do best by not trying to summarize them as much as trying to live them. Which, when you think about it, is pretty much what the 7 billion of us are trying each in our own way each new day.

But wait. Seven billion? How can anyone hold a reality that large? Well, here's a thought. Start by dividing us into our two fundamental philosophical-scientific characteristics. Each new day of our lives, all 7 billion of us are either seeking or saving something. Seeking new achievements, successes, power and conquests. And when we're not, we're saving, protecting, preserve, and holding on to what we already have. Seek-and-save...! Seems like we've been at this since the very beginning. Even before there were philosophers and scientists to explain it to us.