This book argues for the need to put into practice a profound and comprehensive intellectual revolution, affecting to a greater or lesser extent all branches of scientific and technological research, scholarship and education. This intellectual revolution differs, however, from the now familiar kind of scientific revolution described by Kuhn. It does not primarily involve a radical change in what we take to be knowledge about some aspect of the world, a change of paradigm. Rather it involves a radical change in the fundamental, overall intellectual aims and methods of inquiry. At present inquiry is devoted to the enhancement of knowledge. This needs to be transformed into a kind of rational inquiry having as its basic aim to enhance personal and social wisdom. This new kind of inquiry gives intellectual priority to the personal and social problems we encounter in our lives as we strive to realize what is desirable and of value – problems of knowledge and technology being intellectually subordinate and secondary. For this new kind of inquiry, it is what we do and what we are that ultimately matters: our knowledge is but an aspect of our life and being.
The book argues that a necessary, though not a sufficient, condition for us to develop cooperatively a better, more humane world is that we have in existence a tradition of rational inquiry of this new kind, giving priority to life and its problems, devoted to the enhancement of wisdom. At present we have no such tradition. As a result we are all more or less severely handicapped in our capacity to resolve in desirable and good ways problems we encounter in our personal and social lives. Many of our present-day social and global problems are in part due to our long-standing failure to develop such a tradition of genuinely rational, socially active thought, devoted to the growth of wisdom. This basic Socratic idea has been betrayed, and as a result, to put it at its most extreme, we now stand on the brink of self-destruction. In the circumstances, there can scarcely be any more urgent task for all those associated in any way with the academic enterprise – scientists, technologists, scholars, teachers, administrators, students, parents, providers of funds – than to help put into practice the new kind of inquiry, rationally devoted to the growth of wisdom.