Defining Wisdom Grant Competition: Forty Finalists are Announced, Feb. 1, 2008

In November 2007, the Arete Initiative received over 600 applications for the Defining Wisdom grant competition.  Applicants from over 35 countries submitted project ideas that represented practically all academic disciplines. 

 

This past January, the Project Council met in Chicago and selected forty finalists whose proposals best suited the evaluation criteria.  Most of the finalists reside in the United States; however, some are from Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and United Kingdom.  Also, the finalist pool represents a wide range of academic disciplines including, psychology, philosophy, religious studies, computer science, history, biological sciences/evolutionary ecology, classics, hispanic studies, ecology, economics, education, environmental science, law, medicine, methodology/history of science, music, political science, and speech pathology/audiology.

 

The Arete Initiative and Defining Wisdom Project Council look forward to reviewing the full proposals, and meeting each of the finalists in person at the Wisdom Symposium in Chicago, Illinois.

 

Congratulations to the following scholars:

 

Andrew Chen
Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Minnesota State University
United States
Project Title: Can The Collective Intelligence of The World-Wide Web Produce Wisdom? Is This the New Tower of Babel?

Parag Chordia
Assistant Professor, Music
Georgia Institute of Technology
United States
Project Title: The Muse Within: Understanding Musical Wisdom

Deborah Coen
Assistant Professor, History
Barnard College
United States
Project Title: Uncertain Ground: A Historical Tectonics of Wisdom

Melissa Ferguson
Assistant Professor, Psychology
Cornell University
United States
Project Title: When Archimedes and King Solomon Meet: Wisdom as Intuitive Problem Solving 

Brent Field
Research Scholar, Psychology
Princeton University
United States
Project Title: Altruistic and Intuitive Aspects of Wisdom

Alicia Finch
Assistant Professor, Philosophy
Northern Illinois University
United States
Project Title: Practical Wisdom, Eudaimonia, and Surrender: A Philosophical Investigation

Judith Gluck
Professor, Psychology
Alpen-Adria-University
Austria
Project Title: Wisdom and the Life Story: How Life Experiences Foster Wisdom

Jennifer Goldman
Adjunct Instructor, Psychology
Columbia University
United States
Project Title: How Leaders Develop, Use and Cultivate Wisdom to Transform Systems in Long-term Conflict

Jean Gordon
Associate Professor, Speech Pathology
University of Iowa
United States
Project Title:  Wisdom in Words: The Relationship between Language Use and the Perception of Wisdom

David Gortner
Assistant Professor, Religious Studies
Church Divinity School of the Pacific
United States
Project Title: "How is Wisdom Understood and Recognized? Examining Social Constructions of Wisdom in Different Religious and Cultural Contexts"

Jeffrey Green
Assistant Professor, Psychology
Virginia Commonwealth University
United States
Project Title: Wisdom as Learning From Mistakes: Affective Forecasting Regarding Virtues and Vices

Joshua Greene
Assistant Professor, Psychology
Harvard University
United States
Project Title: The Wisdom of Moral Principles

Ankur Gupta
Lecturer, Computer Science
Butler University
United States
Project Title: Wisdom Is Compression: Data Compression as a Mathematical Measure of Wisdom 

C. Dominik Güss
Assistant Professor, Psychology
University of North Florida
United States
Project Title: Wisdom as Proverb Knowledge and the Ability to Solve Uncertain and Complex Problems

Ryan Hanley
Assistant Professor, Political Science
Marquette University
United States
Project Title: Altruism's Wisdom

Matthew Jones
Associate Professor, History
Columbia University
United States
Project Title: Formalism and Its Discontents: Mathematics and Wisdom in the European Enlightenment

Lauris Kaldjian
Associate Professor, Medicine
University of Iowa
Carver College of Medicine
United States
Project Title: Wisdom, Ethics, and the Medical Professional

Hilaire Kallendorf
Associate Professor, Hispanic Studies
Texas A&M University
United States
Project Title: "What Should I Do?": Wise Counsel from the Confessional for (Early) Modern Moral Dilemmas

Pawel Kawalec
Associate Professor, Methodology
Catholic University of Lublin
Poland
Project Title: A Model of Wisdom for an Integrated Management of Innovation

Sean Kelly
Professor, Philosophy
Harvard University
United States
Project Title: Saving Wisdom from Knowledge

Ute Kunzmann
Professor, Psychology
Leipzig University
Germany
Project Title: Wisdom-Related Knowledge and Behavior during Social Conflict

Michael Legaspi
Assistant Professor, Religious Studies
Creighton University
United States
Project Title: Wisdom as Skillful Interpretation: Scriptural Appropriation and the Hermeneutics of Recovery

Heidi Levitt
Associate Professor, Psychology
University of Memphis
United States
Project Title: Principles Toward the Development of Postmodern Professional Wisdom

Brian McCorkle
Assistant Professor, Religious Studies
Boston University
United States
Project Title: Wise Compassion": The Interplay of Wisdom and Compassion"

Randall McNeill
Associate Professor, Classics
Lawrence University
United States
Project Title: The Price of Wisdom: Community and the Individual in Greek and Roman Poetry

Seana Moran
Research Fellow, Education
Stanford University
United States
Project Title: All the Wiser

Shabnam Mousavi
Assistant Professor, Adaptive Behavior and Cognition
Max Planck Institute for Human Development
Germany
Project Title: Practical Wisdom as Heuristic Processes

Dean Moyar
Assistant Professor, Philosophy
John Hopkins University
United States
Project Title: The Wisdom of Justice: Reconciling the Claims of Morality and Right

Sendhil Mullainathan
Professor, Economics
Harvard University
United States
Project Title: Wise Choices: The Interaction of Individual and Institutional Wisdom

Edward Nahmias
Assistant Professor, Philosophy
Georgia State University
United States
Project Title: Free Will and Wisdom in the Age of the Mind Sciences

Nansook Park
Associate Professor, Psychology
University of Rhode Island
United States
Project Title: THE WISE AMONG US:Cross-Cultural Studies of How They Live And the Benefits They Give

John Pfaff
Associate Professor, Law
Fordham University
United States
Project Title: Helping the Law Determine What Science Knows

Martine Prange
Post-doctorate, Philosophy
University of Groningen
Netherlands
Project Title: Joyful Wisdom in Philosophy

Sean Rands
Lecturer, Clinical Veterinary Science
University of Bristol
United Kingdom
Project Title: The Evolutionary Ecology of Wisdom

Michael Sargent
Associate Professor, Psychology
Bates College
United States
Project Title: D*A*R*IA: A Model of Principled Reasoning

Stefan Schmidt
Lecturer, Director, Ecology
University Medical Center Freiburg
Germany
Project Title: Facing the Impossible: A Proposal to Measure and Teach Wisdom

Antje Stange
Visiting Scientist, Psychology
Georgia Institute of Technology
United States
Project Title: Mind and Virtue – Defining Wise Behaviors

Valerie Tiberius
Associate Professor, Philosophy
University of Minnesota
United States
Project Title: The Psychological Foundations of Reflective Wisdom

Neil Tsutsui
Assistant Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management
University of California – Berkeley
United States
Project Title: THE WISDOM OF THE ANT: The Role of Experience in Sociality and Aggression

Keith Whitaker
Adjunct Asst. Professor, Philosophy
Boston College
United States
Project Title: Wisdom at Work: An Inquiry into Wealth Counseling as a Form of Practical Wisdom