knowledge and wisdom

[Sankar Jayanarayanan]

S. Vidyasankar wrote:

> On Fri, 2 May 1997, Gummuluru Murthy wrote:
>

[..]

> > Knowledge and wisdom are entirely different. It is in our hands to
> > acquire knowledge, but we cannot acquire wisdom. Either you are wise or
> > you are not. Knowledge deals with the matters of the not-Self. Wisdom
> > deals with the Self, the Atman.
>
> This is an extremely interesting post. Thanks Gummuluru, for bringing
> up the topic. Yes, the words knowledge and wisdom indicate different
> things. But from a linguistic standpoint, (as far as the English language
> is concerned), one can grow wiser from experience. Thus, one can talk of
> acquiring wisdom, in some sense.
>

One Chinese Zen (or Chan, as it was known in China) monk has said that
"knowledge and wisdom are not the same." I remember reading this in a
book on zen (actually there are no books on zen) but am not sure what the
context was.

> However, the structure of the English language also gives a clue to the
> difference in connotation between "knowledge" and "wisdom". One can know
> or not know (some thing), indicating that "knowledge" predominantly is in
> the realm of subject-object duality. Thus, one can study a thing in depth,
> and know all about it. Such knowledge is an outcome of an action. However,
> one can only *be wise* or otherwise, indicating that wisdom is a state of
> *being*, not an outcome of any action.
>

The same zen book I read also had a quote from a monk saying,"The Tao is not
to be grasped by the mind, but through the whole of one's being." (this quote,
interestingly enough, indicates that Zen Buddhism borrowed some ideas from
Taoism as well.)

One could say that knowledge is what one grasps through one's mind. Wisdom
is what is grasped through one's being.

> Interestingly, many Indo-European languages have two verbal roots
> corresponding to these two concepts. For example, German has "kennen" and
> "weissen", and these two verbs are used in different contexts.
>

[..]

> To the best of my knowledge, sam.skr.ta usage does not distinguish between
> two specific words for knowledge and wisdom. Contemporary English usage
> of these words has changed significantly from its Germanic roots. The word
> "know" is cognate with the German "kennen" and "wise" with "weissen", but
> the German usage of "kennen" and "weissen" does not have the same
> distinctions as the English usage of "knowledge" and "wisdom".
>
>

In German, the verb "wissen" is used in the context of knowing something in
a "deeper" sense than "kennen." (at least, that's the way I understand it).

eg., wissen: "Wissen Sie Biologie?" (Do you know biology?)
and kennen:  "Kennen Sie ihn (ihm?)?" (Do you know him?)

There are other interesting points about German: when asking a person
whether he can understand/speak/read German, the verb "koennen" is used,
as in: "Koennen Sie Deutsch?" (literally "Can you German?").

-Kartik