Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put one in a fruit salad (Miles Kington, via the News Quiz).
Whereas I'd categorise "the set of objects that are fruit and the set of objects that are suitable for use in a fruit salad are not necessarily identical, despite the name" as being experience rather than wisdom. --DR
What is it: a web of information that you can reliably process (eg apply deduction or induction to) to gain additional knowledge / grasp on reality.
For example: The Peru FAQ, The Economist and my Dad all agree on saying the rainfall was 12.3
How it is acquired: use context to relate pieces of information to other pieces of information
What it doesn't yet have: worth (relevance or completeness)
Experience
What is it: the prioritised set of knowledge relevant to generating workable solutions to particular problems, to making the decisions needed to effectively further particular interests or plans
For example: The complete USA military "How To" guide on how to invade Peru for minimum loss of American life.
How it is acquired: from finding, during previous attempts to do similar things, what knowledge was unexpectedly needed
What it doesn't yet have: reflection (self contemplation)
Wisdom
What it is: the experience of life needed to live well
For example: "What goes around comes around"
How it is acquired: the process of acquiring experience, applied to questioning about one's plans and interests (like "what actually are they or should they be")
To put it another way, Experience is the Knowledge that lets you decide how best to go about achieving a particular objective. Wisdom resides in which top level objectives you pick, why you pick them, your awareness of that process and how you relate to it. --DouglasReay How do you think of these terms?
* Wisdom is knowing when not to think about things. I haven't even got close. --Vitenka
* to quote the basic dungeons and dragons rulebook :intelligence is to know its raining, wisdom is to know to use an umbrella to stay dry [macloud]
* Wisdom is a quality of human beings that effects how they turn their experience of life into a system of values by which they live and relate to other people. For further information, see [The Book of Ecclesiastes] and [The Book of Kings]. --Anthony? Reay
* Wisdom is knowing how not to hurt people. It is not the same as experience. Those who are very old and experienced or who have great knowledge and learning can still be cruel. Wisdom is a quality of spirit. When you apply knowledge to make a decision leading to action (or non-action) and are considering alternative possible judgements, what you use (the sensitivity / the perception / the understanding) to discern whether a judgement is sensible or not - that is your wisdom. --Fern? Reay
* "knowledge is acquired by learning, wisdom is acquired by unlearning" -- [Simpson]
* "Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not (to make a reference to a tired cliché which was already mentioned at the top of the page because you were smart enough to read before you edited --SF channeling ChiarkPerson) to put it in a fruit salad."
[OP] DouglasReay also asks: "Can all wisdom be recorded in words? If not, what implications (if any) does that have for the transmission of wisdom across generations or between cultures?"
For example, could a gesture (such as a nod or offered hug) be correctly described as "wise", if the meaning it conveyed due to the context of when and how it was made (and by who and to whom) had an intended positive effect (such as helping someone achieve a significant improvement in their understanding of their self or some other issue troubling/hindering them) ?
Can any words be said to be intrinsically wise, in a way that is independent of context? If not, does this mean that wisdom is performative - a thing that enacted, with each instance of "wisdom" being specific to a time and place? Not concrete (like a football), or pure information (like the rules for the game of football), but ephemeral (like a specific football match).
Beyond Wisdom
OPDouglasReay asks a further question: I was in hospital recently, and got to thinking about wisdom. I'm still not sure on what the nature of wisdom is. Is it a state or a process? Is it a quality of thoughts, writings, people or actions? It appears from what people have written that a wise person is one who lives wisely because they have wise values and wise thoughts leading to wise decisions and wise actions. However, while those thoughts can be written down, a thought or written statement of a thought that lead person A in situation A to make a wise decisions might, when read by person B, lead person B in situation B to make a foolish one. Wisdom, it seems, is inherently personalised. People differ in situation, obligations, mental abilities, talents and personality types. A decision, a lifestyle or even a value, that may be wise for one person to make might be a foolish choice for another. Which leads me to ask, is there a larger framework? In this progression from Data to Information to Knowledge to Experience to Wisdom, is there a next step? Is there something beyond wisdom?
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Wisdom