Ames, Roger T. "Whatever Happened to "Wisdom"?: "Human Beings" or "Human Becomings?" (Conference Paper- International Conference on Creativity and Process: East-West Dialogue 2007).

Abstract

For  the eloquent Pythagoras, the holistic, practical way of life he described as philosophia-"the love of wisdom"-while certainly entailing the contemplation of abstract, theoretical science, involved more importantly religious practices based upon assumptions about the immortality of the human soul, periodical ascetic observances, a program of social and political reform, sustained ethical reflection, a physical regimen, and even dietary prescriptions and prohibitions.  But Pythagoras's conception of philosophy as a holistic vision of the good life faded in time, and what had been a philosophical journey gave way to quite a different pilgrimage, that is, the quest for an abstract, apodictic knowledge and its promise of certainty.  "Knowledge" and "truth" became the vocabulary of systematic philosophy, and "wisdom" became a largely obsolete term in the corridors of the Western academy.  Reverence for the theoretically and spiritually abstract meant that in the fullness of time, practical wisdom, rhetoric, and the aesthetic were relegated to the down side of a prevailing dualism.  Philosophia, "the love of wisdom," had for all intents and purposes, become philoepisteme, "the love of apodictic knowledge."