Human Wisdom - Oral Cultures, Written Cultures

Wisdom is irretrievably linked with age and experience in human societies. If wisdom comes mainly through age and experience, it also requires "sense" to achieve. It is associated with the capacity to deal with experience in a constructive manner. If someone acts in a way that seems sensible, we may use the phrase "he has sense." Sense is the internal quality that promotes the learning process.

The question of the knowledge of creative activity, of intellectuals, of originality, even if this is viewed in a more limited way as only having a better memory, has little directly to do with the notion of wisdom but it has some overlap. A wise individual is definitely someone who knows about human affairs, or at least some segment of these affairs such as midwifery (sage femme, wise woman in French). Equally, the three kings in the story of the magi at the birth of Christ were wise men, not only in realizing the importance of that event, but also perhaps in the way they carried out their ritual and religious roles. Wisdom, knowledge, and common sense are all interrelated in complex ways.