SAPIENCE

'Sapience', usually defined as wisdom or discernment, is the ability of an organism or entity to act with judgment. Judgment is a mental facility that is a particular form of intelligence or
may be considered an additional facility, above intelligence, with its own properties. Robert Sternberg ^[1] has segregated the capacity for judgment from ordinary meanings of intelligence, which is closer to the sense of clever than to wisdom. Good judgment in making decisions about complex life or social decisions is a hallmark of being wise.
The word ''sapience'' is derived from the Latin word for wisdom, ''sapientiae'' or ''sapientia''. These are related to the verb ''sapere'', which means 'to taste' but with the sense of tasting the meaning of life. It is generally interpreted in the English-speaking world as meaning to be wise, and the present participle forms part of ''''Homo sapiens'''', the Latin binomial nomenclature created by Carolus Linnaeus to describe the human species. Linnaeus had originally given humans the species name of ''diurnis'', meaning man of the day. But he later decided that the dominating feature of humans was wisdom, hence application of the name ''sapiens''. Strangely, it seems that he did not consider the idea whether humans were just another kind of animal when choosing this name, instead basing his selection on contemporarily deep religious convictions that man was a product of special creation. Thus, his chosen biological name was intended to emphasize man's uniqueness and separation from the rest of the animal kingdom. As anyone who has had any experience with humans can see, however, his original idea was more accurate.

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See also

References

External links

See also

★ Sentience

★ Self Awareness

★ Metacognition - considered to be one of the definitions of sapience

References

1. Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity Synthesized, , Robert J., Sternberg, Cambridge University Press, , ISBN 0-521-80238-5

External links

★ Wisdom Lexicon Project