Philosophy originally meant love of wisdom, which is all very well. But what is wisdom? Any fool can claim they love wisdom and many do. The study of what wisdom is would be called sophology.

We might debate whether a particular decision is wise or unwise, but without a general theory of what wisdom is, our answers will remain matters of opinion.

I approach sophology using the scientific method’s unspoken core assumption which I call originism. To explain a phenomenon, start at its origin. Explain how it emerged from what precedes it. The sciences are organized by order of appearance, physics to chemistry to life to psychology. The earlier sciences must explain what the later sciences assume.

Wisdom doesn’t start with humans. All adaptive biological traits are “wise” in the sense of helping organisms achieve what they try to achieve, most universally and fundamentally, their struggle for existence. Wisdom emerges with the first organism’s adaptive responsiveness. The first organism could neither think nor feel. Still, it responded in ways that wisely served it in its struggle for existence.

The serenity prayer suggests a formulation for a kind of wisdom common to all organisms: The serenity to accept things, the courage to change things, and the wisdom to know the difference. Even organisms without thoughts or feelings have that kind of embodied wisdom. They change food into energy for their effort. They adapt to what they can’t change about their circumstances.

“The wisdom to know” is a weird phase. Is it wisdom or knowledge? Is wisdom just knowing differences? I think it should read the wisdom to try to notice the differences that best motivate different beneficial responses.

I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in God granting us anything. I think of the serenity prayer not as a prayer to an omniscient God but as a quest. We organisms are trying to stay alive. We’re more likely to stay alive if we quest for ever-better wisdom to notice the circumstantial differences that make a difference to how we should respond in order to achieve our goals.

What counts as a wise goal is a different matter. I think the ultimate goal is to always do today what worked tomorrow, not that that resolves the matter. Worked for whom? Yourself or some larger community? Worked how? Which tomorrow and since tomorrow isn’t here to guide us today how would we best guess what will work tomorrow?

This page is about my approach to sophology.