New Feature! To kick off 2010, I am adding the ability for readers to write comments at the bottom of each idea. If you agree or disagree with the idea or my interpretation of it, you will now be able to have your voice heard.
Preservation of health, which is without doubt, of all the blessings of this life, the first and fundamental one; for the mind is so intimately dependent upon the condition and relation of the organs of the body, that if any means can ever be found to render men wiser and more ingenious than hitherto, I believe that it is in medicine they must be sought for.
~Rene Descartes,
Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences
Now this is an interesting idea. Descartes is saying that the field of medicine will produce wiser men. That the operation of a healthy mind depends on a healthy body. If ever a technology were created that could keep us healthy, in both mind and body, then we would not spend so many wasteful hours lamenting our health with less than optimal brains.
I would add a second reason that improved medicine may make us wiser. If we could figure out how to markedly increase the human lifespan, then humanity would, over time become filled with much wiser men. As it is, a man doesn't even begin to become wise until his later years. Wisdom can only arise from a life filled with the accumulation of knowledge and experience: a wise youth is an oxymoron.
So if a man could be said to be wise at the age of 80, what would he look like at the age of 160? Would he be twice as wise? I think that he would be even more than that - maybe ten times as wise. The 80 year old man spent his 80 years beginning at ignorance: the 160 year old man will have begun his next 80 years from a much firmer starting point.
What next?
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