Blog #9: Knowledge and Wisdom

Amity Tran

HON 101

Schultz

3 November 2016

Blog #9: Knowledge and Wisdom

Google defines knowledge as “facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education” and wisdom as “the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgement.” The defining characteristic that separates wisdom from knowledge is good judgement. Although wisdom includes having knowledge, it is when that knowledge is used to make better judgements about personal or life choices that it becomes wisdom. In Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, he uses his knowledge of medicine to address how medicine is unable to solve all the problems that come with the end of life.

Gawande writes about what should be the right way to deal with the end of life. Should we focus on giving meaning to their life or fixing medical problems that will not guarantee a normal, functional life? Gawande includes countless facts, statistics and historical events that have helped to shape the way medicine and society deals with the end of life. The readers were able to notice Gawande’s shift in knowledge to wisdom when he presented the argument that medicine and society have been dealing with the end of life the wrong way. Medicine and society both focus on fixing the problem through emphasis on safety and treatment, but this does not always guarantee happiness. As a character in the book says,”You’re confusing treatment with care.” This judgement on how to change the way the end of life is dealt with for the better along with evidence that supports his claims show how Gawande was able to turn his knowledge into wisdom.