Has Our Knowledge Passed Our Wisdom? The Dangerous Gap Between What We Can Do and What We Should Do

On July 16, 1945, scientists watched the sky turn brighter than the sun. They had done something never done before: created the first nuclear explosion using the energy released from splitting atomic nuclei. One of the hardest achievements in science. That same year, in Japan, the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saw the sky turn brighter than the sun as well. Around 70,000 people in Hiroshima and around 40,000 in Nagasaki died as a result of the bombings, many of them immediately and many others in the following days, weeks, months, and years. Though knowledge is usually seen as a good thing, it can have a devastating cost, like the many casualties in this case. That cost comes from the difference between our knowledge and discoveries and what we do with them. The difference is wisdom.

Knowledge is facts, information, and education. Wisdom is how one uses this information; it involves experience, reflection, judgment, and actually understanding what something means and what the consequences are. Knowledge tells you how to split an atom; wisdom is what tells you whether you should.

Another difference between the two is that knowledge builds up. One person’s discovery will be the next person’s starting point. Unfortunately, wisdom does not work that way; it has to be lived, mistake by mistake. Right now, as a society, we have a lot of knowledge but not as much wisdom. That’s dangerous because knowledge is just the tool; wisdom is how to use the tool. Using a hammer doesn’t determine whether you’re building a house or smashing in a window.

Knowledge Can Tell Us How. But Who Tells Us If We Should?

You could argue that wisdom usually catches up to some extent, in the form of rules. Laws and regulations try to keep things from happening again. A scientist who helped make the atomic bomb, Leo Szilard, urged the president not to use it on Japan. But it’s always after the fact. Major international treaties limiting nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, came years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the NPT opening for signature in 1968. By then, the damage was already done.

Knowledge tells you how to build something; wisdom involves considering whether building it is a good idea. We can build a bomb, but is it a good idea? So, what happens when we become powerful enough to do something before we are wise enough to understand what we’re doing? This isn’t just a pattern from history. Engineers have the knowledge to build systems like AI and social media algorithms. But some of the very people who built those systems have admitted that we don’t fully grasp all of their effects. It is up to us what we do with this information.

What Happens When Our Power Moves Faster Than Our Wisdom?

Author: Juno Martin
Editor & Publisher: Lucía Lobato

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