Science and Enlightenment: Two Great Problems of Learning

Nicholas Maxwell has devoted much of his working life to arguing that we need to bring about a revolution in academia so that it seeks and promotes wisdom and does not just acquire knowledge. He has published a number of books on this theme, including What’s Wrong With Science? (Bran's Head Books, 1976), From Knowledge to Wisdom (Blackwell, 1984), The Comprehensibility of the Universe (Clarendon Press, 1998), The Human World in the Physical Universe (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), Is Science Neurotic? (Imperial College Press, 2004), How Universities Can Help Create a Wiser World: The Urgent Need for an Academic Revolution (Imprint Academia, 2014), Understanding Scientific Progress (Paragon House, 2017), In Praise of Natural Philosophy (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017), and Karl Popper, Science and Enlightenment (UCL Press, 2017). He has also published several papers on this theme and on such diverse subjects as scientific method, the rationality of science, the philosophy of the natural and social sciences, the humanities, quantum theory, causation, the mind-body problem, aesthetics, and moral philosophy. For a book about his work see L. McHenry, ed., Science and the Pursuit of Wisdom: Studies in the Philosophy of Nicholas Maxwell (Ontos Verlag, 2009). For nearly thirty years Maxwell taught philosophy of science at University College London, where he is now Emeritus Reader. In 2003 he founded Friends of Wisdom, an international group of academics and educationalists concerned that universities should seek wisdom and not just acquire knowledge (see www.knowledgetowisdom.org). He has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s “Start the Week”, and on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Ideas” Programme. He has lectured at universities and at conferences throughout the UK, in Europe, USA, Canada, and Taiwan. For more about his work see http://www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom. ‘Arguing for Wisdom in the University’, a recent intellectual autobiography published in 2012, and many other articles available online at http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/view/people/ANMAX22.date.html.