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Experiential Wisdom and Optimal Experience: Interviewswith Three Distinguished Lifelong Learners
Kevin Rathunde
Published online: 26 August 2009
� Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009
Abstract The present article suggests that lifelong
learning is enhanced by the capacity to make experiential
course corrections that lead back to states of interest and
flow experience. The notion of experiential wisdom is
introduced to describe such a capacity for navigation. A
person with experiential wisdom recognizes that optimal
experiences are more likely to occur when an affectively
charged intuitive mode works in synchrony with a delib-
erative rational mode and is better able to cultivate situa-
tions where the interrelation of these two modes is
optimized. The first part of the article provides a framework
for understanding experiential wisdom and the regulation of
optimal experience. The second part illustrates the practice
of experiential wisdom by drawing on interviews with three
distinguished lifelong learners—poet Mark Strand, social
scientist Donald Campbell, and medical researcher Jonas
Salk.
Keywords Wisdom � Flow experience �Lifelong learning � Intuition � Interest
No thinker can ply his occupation save as he is lured
and rewarded by total integral experiences that are
intrinsically worthwhile. Without them he would
never know what it is really to think and would be
completely at a loss in distinguishing real thought
from the spurious article.
–John Dewey
The main theme of the present article is that lifelong
learning can be greatly enhanced by the regulation of
optimal experience. The notion of optimal experience is
used here to refer to both the general experience of interest
(Renninger et al. 1992) and the more intense experience
of flow, or a state of total absorption in some activity
(Csikszentmihalyi 1990). To state the theme more directly:
Lifelong learning can be enhanced when one has the ability
to make experiential course corrections that lead back to
states of interest and flow. Such an argument is unlikely to
be very controversial. It simply states that if one can sustain
interest, and occasionally be rewarded with experiences of
flow that renew and deepen interest, then one will continue
on a path of learning and growth.
The idea of ‘‘regulation’’ put forward here, however,
does not depict a consciously directed process where a
person is in complete control of finding interest and flow.
How can we become immersed in some activity? How can
we get interest back when the feeling fades? To answer
these questions requires a more subtle and nuanced concept
of regulation that will be referred to as experiential wis-
dom. A person with experiential wisdom is better able to
put themselves in situations where intuition and rationality
work in a complementary fashion. Such a concept will not
eliminate a role for conscious decisions that can influence
optimal experience, but it will place an increased emphasis
on recognizing the role of more pre-conscious, affective,
and intuitive modes that frame situations and set the stage
for more conscious and voluntary processing. The first part
of the article will provide a conceptual framework for
thinking about experiential wisdom and the regulation of
optimal experience. It draws from a number of different
psychological and philosophical accounts of experience,
including perspectives on emotion and intuition discussed
in the growing literature of positive psychology (Seligman
K. Rathunde (&)
Department of Family and Consumer Studies, University
of Utah, 225 S. 1400 E. Rm. 228, Salt Lake City,
UT 84112-0080, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
123
J Adult Dev (2010) 17:81–93
DOI 10.1007/s10804-009-9083-x
and Csikszentmihalyi 2000). The second part of the article
illustrates experiential wisdom by drawing on interviews
with three noted individuals whose lives have been guided
by a sustained and abiding interest—the Pulitzer Prize-
winning poet Mark Strand, the distinguished social scien-
tist and methodologist Donald Campbell, and the medical
researcher and virologist Jonas Salk, inventor of the first
successful polio vaccine. These interviews were originally
collected as part of Csikszentmihalyi’s (1996) study of
creativity in later life.
In order to frame the argument that follows, several
caveats are worth mentioning. First, the perspective here is
not that a person needs to be able to articulate their
experiential wisdom in order to stay on a path of lifelong
learning. Although the interviews with Strand, Campbell,
and Salk reveal an unusual understanding of the process of
regulating experience and the ability to talk about it, many,
if not most, individuals who are able to sustain interest in
their lives do so without any meta-awareness of the pro-
cess. Developing a conceptual framework for describing
the process, however, could prove useful for teaching skills
of regulation to young students or others who are strug-
gling to stay engaged. Secondly, it is not suggested here
that there is one model of regulation that neatly describes
the learning process. The interviews, in fact, reveal an
idiosyncratic mix of techniques to stay engaged and
interested. Nevertheless, there are common principles in
the three accounts, principles that help to clarify the
meaning of experiential wisdom and serve as a valuable
road map for how to sustain interest and trigger episodes of
flow experience.
Navigating a Path of Abiding Interest: A Framework
for Interpreting the Interviews
Much is known about the importance of interest for
learning. A number of studies show that when feeling
interested, students learn more efficiently (Renninger et al.
1992). Likewise, occasional episodes of peak or flow
experience accelerate learning and growth (Csikszentmih-
alyi 1990; Dewey 1934; Maslow 1968). It is less clear,
however, why some individuals are able to regulate such
positive states along a path of abiding interest and lifelong
learning, while others jump from one interest to the next or
lose interest entirely. In other words, how is it that some
individuals are able to make their interest abide and have
more frequent episodes of deep engagement that refresh the
feeling of interest?
Providing a good answer to these questions is difficult
because it requires understanding the fluid patterns of
attention that sustain interest and occasionally trigger flow
experience. Adding to the difficulty is a paradigm shift in
contemporary philosophy and cognitive science that
increasingly recognizes that attention is more influenced by
pre-conscious, emotional, intuitive considerations than
previously thought (Haight 2009; Lakoff and Johnson
1999). In other words, the Socratic tradition in the West
that has viewed thinking and decision making as primarily
a matter of reasoned deliberation is not holding up in the
face of new research. To accomplish the task of describing
how to navigate abiding interest, therefore, the approach
here relies on perspectives from phenomenological phi-
losophy and contemporary thought on the embodied mind.
Playing key roles in this regard are the American philos-
opher John Dewey, the French phenomenologist Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, as well as several contemporary thinkers
whose work investigates embodied knowledge (Damasio
1994; Johnson 2007; Lakoff and Johnson 1999; Leder
1990). These perspectives will offer needed insight for
conceptualizing the intricacies of ongoing experience
and will help provide a framework for interpreting the
interviews.
A central theme of the framework presented here is that
sustained interest and flow experience are more likely to
occur when two facets of attention work in synchrony: an
affectively charged, intuitive, taken-for-granted orientation
we bring to a task, and the selective, deliberate, focused
concentration we use to work on a task. When one or the
other mode works in isolation or without the ‘‘help’’ of the
other, the quality of experience degenerates and staying on
a path of abiding interest becomes difficult. That two dif-
ferent modes of relating to the world are intrinsic to human
nature—one more intuitive and the other more rational—is
a theme that has been repeated throughout history and has
been increasingly emphasized in the adult development
literature (see Hoare 2006; Kramer 2000; Labouvie-Vief
1990, 1994). Yet the former mode is often underempha-
sized or ignored completely in many accounts of self-reg-
ulation and learning (e.g., Zimmerman 1990). The notion
of experiential wisdom is meant to correct this imbalance
and place a stronger emphasis on the overlooked roles of
emotion and intuition in setting the stage for more selective
concentration. Having experiential wisdom presumably
facilitates these two modes working together; as a result, it
helps to sustain interest and leads to more flow experience.
Despite the existence of many bimodal and dialectic
conceptions of how the mind works, most accounts of
learning have focused on what can be easily talked about
and measured, namely, the deliberate way we focus
attention, makes plans, block out distractions, and complete
tasks. In his pioneering work on attention, William James
(1890) referred to this effortful and sequential mode of
processing as voluntary attention. Others have called it
selective attention (see Kaplan 1995). There is no doubt
that voluntary or selective attention is necessary for staying
82 K. Rathunde
123
on a path of lifelong learning and must be a part of any
worthwhile description of experiential wisdom. However,
the regulation of experience is not a purely rational or
conscious enterprise. Even in the absence of sophisticated
theoretical accounts of why this is so, every parent and
teacher knows from experience that when one tries to
‘‘force interest,’’ the motivation to learn often evaporates
and the opposite effect can take place. There must also be a
present-centered context of meaning and emotional rele-
vance that sets the stage for voluntary concentration. Both
modes, one involuntary and immediate, and one effortful
and sequential, perform a vital role in sustaining interest.
When voluntary attention is used in relative isolation from
involuntary attention, it results in mental fatigue and neg-
ative moods (Kaplan and Kaplan 1989); when involuntary
attention is the only operative mode, it can give way to
disorganized thought and aimless distraction (Dewey
1933).
Merleau-Ponty (1962) described the immediately pre-
sented context for specific action as pre-objective inten-
tionality or an ‘‘inner diaphragm’’:
Prior to stimuli and sensory contexts, we must rec-
ognize a kind of inner diaphragm which determines…what our reflexes and perceptions will be able to aim
at in the world, the area of our possible operations,
the scope of our life (p. 68).
Dewey (1922) described this implicit context simply as
habit.
All habits are demands for certain kinds of activity;
and they constitute the self. In any intelligible sense
of the word will, they are will. They form our
effective desires and they furnish us with our working
capacities (p. 25).
When selective attention is exercised within such
motivated frameworks, there is ‘‘emotionalized thinking’’
(Dewey 1934, p. 74). In other words, these immediately
given meanings, in addition to providing the scope for
possible action, provide the impetus and emotional energy
for the rational processes that follow.
The same theme of a pre-conscious frame that sets the
stage for rational thought has recently been elaborated in
multidisciplinary perspectives on embodiment (Johnson
2007; Lakoff and Johnson, 1999). Human embodiment
suggests that abstract/conceptual thought is grounded in
our sensorimotor experience and esthetic grasp of a
situation.
An embodied view of meaning looks for the origin
and structures of meaning in the organic activities of
embodied creatures in interaction with their changing
environment. It sees meaning and all of our higher
functioning as growing out of and shaped by our
ability to perceive things, manipulate objects, move
our bodies in space, and evaluate our situation
(Johnson 2007, p. 11).
Current perspectives on embodiment offer a direct cri-
tique of dichotomous views of the mind that separate
emotion (body) from cognition (mind), and privilege the
latter. In his book Descartes Error, the neurologist Antonio
Damasio, a leading researcher on embodied cognition, has
shown that when injuries occur to areas of the brain that are
important for experiencing emotion, the process of rea-
soning is adversely affected. He comments (1994):
The process of emotion and feeling are indispensable
for rationality… The lower levels in the neural edifice
of reason are the same ones that regulate the pro-
cessing of emotions and feelings, along with the body
functions necessary for an organism’s survival. In
turn, these lower levels maintain direct and mutual
relationships with virtually every bodily organ, thus
placing the body directly in the chain of operations
that generate the highest reaches of reasoning, deci-
sion making, and, by extension, social behavior and
creativity (p. xiii).
Current work in positive psychology on emotion is yet
another area that has questioned whether rational processes
have the directive quality once prescribed to them. In
relation to morality and behavior, for example, Haight
(2009) suggests that moral emotions have a powerful
shaping effect on how a situation is framed, and reasoning
in more of a ‘‘servant’’ than a ‘‘high priest’’ in the temple of
morality. Such emotional frames are presumably shaped by
cultural experience and the cooperative and competitive
evolutionary forces that have been at play in the develop-
ment of the human species. If emotions are downplayed or
ignored, especially positive emotions such as joy and
curiosity, it would be hard to explain the expansion or
broadening of thought that is characteristic of positive adult
development (Fredrickson 2009).
What has been referred to here as pre-conscious,
habitual, emotional, or an esthetic grasping of a situation is
often described simply as intuition (Myers 2004). For the
sake of clarity, this inclusive term will primarily be used to
describe this particular mode. The actual definition fits
extremely well: intuition is the act of knowing or sensing
without the use of rational processes. Myers (2004) refers
to intuition as the ‘‘automaticity of being’’ and summarizes
the growing body of research that is revealing its operation
in everyday life. Moreover, to have an intuition (or hunch)
implies that there is something incomplete in a situation
that needs to be made clear. Therefore, the notion also
leaves the door open, so to speak, for voluntary processes
Experiential Wisdom and Optimal Experience 83
123
that can be used for elaboration and clarification. Intuition
gives concentration its motivational charge to bring
something—a new connection or distinction—to light.
Creativity research has for many years suggested such a
dynamic and vital role for intuition in the early phases of
the creative process (i.e., preparation, incubation, and
insight, see Wallas 1926). In addition, other theoretical
models of creativity have postulated the interplay of intu-
itive and rational modes as essential for creative thought
(see Barron 1969; Kris 1952; Martindale 1999).
Experiential Wisdom and the Regulation of Optimal
Experience
Abiding interest and lifelong learning are presumably
enhanced by the interplay between intuition and voluntary
attention. Knowing this, however, does not bring the
interest-regulation process under a person’s direct control.
Even when discussing individuals who have led remarkable
lives, the path of lifelong learning is never self-directed or
self-regulated—it is navigated. A navigator is reading a
map or following the stars in order to reach a destination; it
is an active process, but one that depends upon following
certain predetermined signs. Navigating a path of lifelong
learning is similar: a person actively makes adjustments,
yet must follow a course that is highlighted by experiences
and habits. Experiential wisdom navigates by first recog-
nizing which way forward is the right direction, and then
actively setting out on that course.
Even though direct control is impossible, there is little
doubt that some individuals are better able to stay on a
course of sustained interest and learning. Experiential
wisdom enhances this ability to navigate well. It allows a
person to ‘‘read the map’’ of intuition and make appropriate
course corrections with the effort of voluntary attention.
Because intuition operates in a pre-conscious way, it is not
always easy to recognize its signals. To do so, also to let it
operate unimpeded, requires a relaxed openness, patience,
and a tolerance for ambiguity, qualities that have tradi-
tionally been attributed to a creative person (see Barron
1969; Csikszentmihalyi 1996; Sternberg 1988). Sometimes
such openness may even lead to a dramatic change in long-
held interests in order to keep the process of inquiry fresh.
In other words, the goal of sustaining interest may some-
times be furthered by changing past interests. More specific
examples of how to let intuition do its work will be pro-
vided by the interviews with Strand, Campbell, and Salk.
It is not just letting intuitions unfold that manifests
experiential wisdom; it is also the capacity to willfully act
on them in ways that transform the person and the situa-
tion, thus leading to the creation of new habits and intu-
itions, and so on in dialectical fashion. For instance, when a
musician is inspired by a particular melody that sponta-
neously comes to mind, and then consciously works to
flesh it out and write it down, that melody becomes part of
the musician’s taken-for-granted knowledge that provides a
context for the intuition of new melodies. An intellectual
process is no different than the artistic process and moves
forward in a similar way (see Dewey 1934). When an
author is working on a manuscript and senses that there is
something important missing in the argument, intuition is
at work. The desire to amend the manuscript is thereby
created, and selective concentration sets out to flesh out the
problem and resolve it. The amended argument, in turn,
sets the stage for the intuition of the next problem in need
of correction.
Maintaining interest and finding flow depends upon these
interrelated course corrections. An intuited problem will
introduce frustration and tension until it is resolved. When
voluntary attention is able to bring the problem into focus
and start resolving it, the learning/creative process moves
forward, and a person is more likely to be rewarded with the
heightened intensity of a flow experience. John Dewey
(1934) called the intensification of experience at this point
of culmination an integral experience. It was integral
because for that brief episode, a continuity between past,
present, and future experience emerged. A more detailed
look at the flow experience also reveals why experiential
wisdom is beneficial for intensifying experience, main-
taining optimal arousal, and avoiding prolonged impasses in
states of boredom and anxiety.
The need for optimal arousal is a genetically based part
of human nature (Berlyne 1960; Hebb 1955). That the
human organism is born trying to maintain optimal arousal
is demonstrated by an infant’s attempt to avoid too much or
too little stimulation (Caron and Caron 1968). Flow can be
thought of as an optimal state of arousal that combines a
sense of order and novelty at the same time. This combi-
nation is represented in the flow model by the constructs of
skill and challenge, respectively, and flow is thought to
occur more often when a person’s skills and challenges are
similarly strong and balanced (see Csikszentmihalyi 1990).
Such an optimally arousing condition, however, is unsta-
ble. If an activity is repeated over and over without any
variation or change, it loses its intensity. It is this fact that
makes the flow model a dynamic one related to learning
and development. As Piaget (1962) observed, disequilib-
rium between the processes of assimilation and accom-
modation is inevitable; continually re-establishing
equilibrium is the motor of cognitive development. In a
phenomenological perspective, disequilibrium is subjec-
tively signaled by boredom and anxiety—two inevitable
life experiences, and flow is a felt manifestation of re-
establishing equilibrium (Rathunde and Csikszentmihalyi
2006).
84 K. Rathunde
123
Flow, therefore, represents a healthy solution to the
inevitable problems of boredom and anxiety. To resolve a
feeling of boredom (i.e., low challenge with high skill), a
person must raise their challenge level and initiate a feeling
of change and expansion. Conversely, to alleviate a feeling
of anxiety (i.e., high challenge with low skill) a person
needs to raise skills and thereby increase a sense of order
and emerging control. A person with experiential wisdom
would be better equipped to respond to boredom and
anxiety and make these adjustments. For example, if feel-
ing bored, intuition could set in motion a problem-finding
mode. The hunch or feeling that something was incomplete
in a situation would be followed by voluntary processing,
thereby bringing the new challenge into focus and pro-
viding an antidote to boredom. Conversely, if a person was
feeling anxious, intuition can set in motion a problem-
solving mode. Once there is a dimly perceived sense of
connection or resolution to the problem, voluntary pro-
cessing can flesh it out and make it explicit.
In this way, the bimodal attributes of experiential wis-
dom can work to differentiate and integrate knowledge and
make flow more likely to reoccur (Rathunde and
Csikszentmihalyi 2006). In Piagetian terms, they can help
move assimilation toward accommodation and then back
again, with each traverse holding the promise of equilib-
rium and temporary episodes of optimal experience. Apter
(1989) has suggested that such reversals of arousal depend
upon the juxtaposition of more spontaneous (paratelic) and
goal-oriented (telic) modes. Having experiential wisdom,
therefore, makes it easier to instigate such reversals by
using intuitive and rational modes to problem-find and
raise arousal, or problem-solve and lower arousal,
depending on what adjustment is needed in order to get
back to flow.
In summary, intuitive and voluntary modes must work
together to intensify the present moment beyond what
either mode could accomplish on its own. It is this total
involvement, and the intensification of energy associated
with it, that triggers the subjective feeling of flow.
Experiential wisdom sets in motion a recurring cycle of
problem-finding and problem-solving. It thereby insures
an intrinsic tension and rhythm in the learning process. If
intuition is the only mode that can be brought to bear on
some task, the likely result will be a series of discon-
nected thoughts and associations that will eventually
dissipate energy; if focused concentration is all that is
brought to an activity, mental fatigue will eventually
deaden the quality of experience. As James (1890) noted,
it takes great effort to hold some topic or thought in
consciousness while suppressing other competing stimuli.
If a person does not benefit from a spontaneously given,
affective, intuitive orientation to a situation, even great
effort will falter.
Examples of Experiential Wisdom: Interviews with
Mark Strand, Donald Campbell, and Jonas Salk
The interviews with Strand, Campbell, and Salk reveal a
self-conscious understanding of the process of regulating
optimal experience. Although leading a life sustained by
interest does not require such a meta-awareness, it is likely
to be helpful to those who possess it. Each of these
remarkable individuals provides idiosyncratic descriptions
with respect to how intuitive and voluntary processes were
coordinated to further their interest and work. The inter-
view material does not attempt to prove a hypothesis; the
goal is to present detail from the interviews in order to help
flesh out a better understanding of experiential wisdom.
Making Meaning, Dismantling Meaning, and Remaking
it: Mark Strand
Mark Strand is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and essayist;
he is also a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (‘‘genius
award’’). He served as Poet Laureate of the United States in
1990 and has taught literature and creative writing at a
number of prestigious universities, including John Hopkins
University and the University of Chicago. He is currently at
Columbia University.
Paying attention and witnessing. A sense of mortality
was important to Strand. It informed how he related to
the world, one aspect of which he called paying attention.
‘‘To say that I have an aim or a purpose would make it
seem too grandiose,’’ he said, ‘‘my purpose, if I have one,
is just to pay attention.’’ He elaborated on this idea.
I think that it [paying attention] grows out of a sense
of mortality. I mean, we’re only here for a short while
on earth, and I think it’s such a lucky accident, having
been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay atten-
tion… We are, as far as we know, the only part of the
universe that’s self-conscious… we’re combined in
such a way that we can describe what it’s like to be
alive, to be witnesses.
‘‘Paying attention’’ and ‘‘witnessing’’ are key elements
in Strand’s abiding interest in poetry and represent the
movement between intuitive and voluntary attentional
processes. Paying attention is staying acutely sensitive to
the moment and being alive; witnessing is responding with
thought and consciousness to what one is experiencing.
These same two elements were also evident in his advice to
an aspiring poet:
I would say to read a great deal, withhold opinion,
keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut for
as long as possible… be a receiver for as long as is
Experiential Wisdom and Optimal Experience 85
123
possible until it becomes unbearable [and] you can’t
just receive anymore—you must produce.
In the above quote, the immediacy of paying attention
and self-conscious witnessing are described in passive and
active terms: one receives as long as possible, and then one
responds and produces something from that experience.
Such is the dynamic in Strand’s poetry.
Becoming conscious of experience through the process
of writing was clearly an essential component as far as
Strand was concerned. He noted, however, that not all felt
as he did, and he found it paradoxical that some young
people might think the witnessing component to be a cor-
ruption of poetry: ‘‘You find a lot of young people… don’t
even want to write their poems down. [They] would rather
recite them to you as if poetry were strictly performance,
like it was all intuition and improvisation, nothing to do
with thought or the interventions of consciousness.’’ Per-
haps, he surmised, that this was because of the difficulty of
writing, especially the difficulty in finding the right words
that are both novel and familiar at the same time: ‘‘Writing
is very difficult. It’s very difficult because you… have to
use language in a compelling and different way, and lan-
guage is the one thing that we all have in common.’’
The immediacy of paying attention and conscious wit-
nessing were both important, but Strand recognized that
they did not easily fit together and could result in different
kinds of writer’s block if not coordinated. For instance,
Strand noted that a phase of receiving can reach a point
where it becomes ‘‘unbearable,’’ and the longer one was in
this phase without reacting, the more ‘‘frustration’’ one
feels. There was also, however, a different kind of impasse
or block that resulted from the overuse of selective, con-
scious processes. He said that one of the ‘‘worst’’ things
one could do as a writer was to go back over poems and
ask, ‘‘How did I do that?’’ When feeling desperate to get
started on something, the urge may come to shortchange
the holistic, dialectical process and simply repeat oneself;
this, he thought, was a dead end course. Such an impasse
occurred the first time Strand was hired to be a poet, and
the obligation to write interfered with the natural process:
‘‘I’d never really chosen to be a poet, it just happened along
the way… I was sort of stuck with the obligation to write
poetry because here at the university I’d been hired to be a
poet.’’ The only way to overcome this impasse was to
‘‘begin from ground zero,’’ and go through the entire pro-
cess of paying attention and witnessing.
This receiving/responding dialectic of first paying
attention by keeping one’s eyes and ears open, and then by
witnessing through writing, was a process that pervaded all
of Strand’s life. He had a constant feeling that he was
‘‘never finished.’’ Even when nearing the end of a poem
there was a feeling of anticipating getting on to something
new: ‘‘So you never have a feeling that you’re caught up.
Which is a good thing, I guess. I think if you ever caught
up… you’re sort of dead.’’ Strand’s relationship to poetry,
therefore, was locked in a continual cycle: new experiences
needed to be witnessed, and this witnessing set the stage for
more openness to experience, even before one poem was
completely finished. Through this reoccurring process,
Strand coordinated an immediate openness with more
selective attention. It is interesting to note the reflection of
these ideas in the titles of two of Strand’s books: Sleeping
with one eye open and The continuous life. The former
conveys the sense of immersion in life with a corre-
sponding self-consciousness (presumably the one open
eye), and the latter conveys the sense that the dialectic
never rests.
Phases of indirect and direct thinking. A poem might
begin in the morning when Strand felt the ‘‘freshest’’ and
his awareness was the most acute. And it often began with
the desire to write and a feeling of intuition.
Things begin with the desire to sit down and write.
Sometimes I don’t have anything in mind, I just have
the desire to write. I’ll jot a few words down, and
that’s a beginning. It can happen when I’m reading
something else. It’s different all the time, there’s no
one way… One of the amazing things about what I do
is you don’t know when you’re going to be hit with
an idea, you don’t know where it comes from.
New ideas occurred in a variety of unpredictable ways:
being receptive to language, seeing a new possibility in
someone’s use of a phrase or a word, reading something,
remembering something from one’s past, or just seeing
something in a new way. Strand provided an excellent
illustration of experiential wisdom in describing how he
tried to prolong a phase of openness and indirect thinking
by using distractions.
I often, in the middle of work, play solitaire to get my
mind off what I’m doing, so I [can] come back, say in
20 minutes or a half an hour, and approach it with a
new freshness. Sometimes I’ll get in the car and
drive, put on music, and do meaningless errands so I
can sort of forget what I’m doing but think about it at
the same time—both. When you drive you have to
concentrate on the road, and you have to stop at
stoplights… you realize the meaninglessness of your
errand all the time but yet you realize that it’s getting
you away from your work and you need that time
away. Then you come back, and you run upstairs and
work again. Sometimes it works, sometimes I just
[get] back and I’m just as lost as I was.
These distractions apparently served the purpose of
slowing down the onset of rational and voluntary processes
86 K. Rathunde
123
that were, at the moment, incompatible with intuitive
spontaneity. Strand thought of voluntary processes as
‘‘direct thinking,’’ and if they occurred before they could
be put to good use in the writing of the poem, they were
destructive of the writing. He needed sometimes to get out
and get his ‘‘mind off’’ what he is doing: ‘‘I think I’m
always thinking about what I’m writing. I think that maybe
it’s not always direct thinking… I become impatient, have
to get out and slow down, and think of something else.’’ In
addition to solitaire, driving, and doing errands, he had
other ‘‘little rituals’’ that he relied upon. Sometimes he
went downstairs and looked in the refrigerator and thought
about lunch. At other times he scanned through pictures.
Even other forms of writing—if they were not ‘‘too
extended’’—took his mind off of a poem: ‘‘I can always
pick up something else and begin working and it doesn’t
necessarily interfere with the poetry. It can, if it’s too
extended. But I tend to write in paragraphs, anyway… I can
write a paragraph, save it, [and] go back to my poem.’’
From the perspective of experiential wisdom, these
distractions allowed Strand to continue using his intuition
(Myers 2004), inner diaphragm (Merleau-Ponty 1962),
habits (Dewey 1922), or esthetic grasping of a situation
(Johnson 2007). In Strand’s view, these rituals and dis-
tractions allowed indirect thinking to run its course.
However, after returning from doing these other things, he
might directly engage the poem: ‘‘Then I will get off alone
and tune in to what’s happened back there.’’ This tuning in
involved the use of voluntary and selective attention and
represented the more deliberate phase of trail and error in
the laborious process of writing. This phase of the pro-
cess—in contrast to the distractions that helped further
intuition—required solitude and quiet to enhance focus and
concentration. In the creativity literature, such a phase is
referred to as elaboration (Wallas 1926). Strand described
it as ‘‘working hard’’ on the poem to find closure: ‘‘If I’m
working hard on a poem, I’ll keep visiting it through the
afternoon and into the evening in an effort to complete it, to
get rid of it. Also if I’m working on something as I’ve
described, I’ll get up very early and see if I can get rid of
it.’’ When I asked him to expand upon what he meant by
‘‘getting rid’’ of a poem, he continued: ‘‘Finishing it. I
mean, getting rid of that sort of nagging sense of respon-
sibility I have toward finishing it, so I can begin something
new.’’
An extended present. Strand’s experiential wisdom
allowed him to navigate the pitfalls and impasses that could
have derailed the creation of the poem. When things were
going well, he enjoyed the process of writing and was in a
flow-like extended present.
Well, you’re right in the work. You lose your sense
of time. You’re completely enraptured. You’re
completely caught up in what you’re doing. It’s not that
you’re… swayed by the possibilities you see in this
work, that is, the eventual end of it, although that’s a
little of it. If that becomes too powerful, then you get
up… because the excitement is too great. You can’t
continue to work, or continue to see the end of the
work, because you’re jumping ahead of yourself all the
time. The idea is to be so saturated with it that there’s no
future or past, it’s just an extended present in which
you’re making meaning and dismantling meaning, and
remaking it, with undue regard for the words you’re
using. It’s meaning carried to a high order. It’s not just
essential communication, daily communication; it’s a
total communication. When you’re working on some-
thing and you’re working well, you have feeling that
there’s no other way of saying what you’re saying.
In the above passage, Strand describes several familiar
dimensions of a flow experience, including the loss of a
sense of time, a merging of awareness with the activity, an
extended present or one-pointedness of mind, and the
feeling of intrinsic motivation, or that things are pro-
ceeding exactly as they should be proceeding (see
Csikszentmihalyi 1990). In addition, he points out that
there is an inkling of self-awareness during flow that exists
alongside the sense of being immersed and enraptured.
This is an important point, because flow states are some-
times mistakenly thought of a lacking any consciousness
that stands alongside the sense of immersion. Strand’s is an
eloquent statement of being of two minds at once, or what
Dewey (1910) described as the ideal mental condition of
being ‘‘playful and serious at the same time’’ (p. 218).
There is both a ‘‘playful’’ attention to the means of an
activity and a ‘‘serious’’ attention to its ends; this full and
undivided attention is what makes the moment so exhila-
rating. If the awareness of the ‘‘eventual end’’ of the poem
grows too strong, Strand realized, the extended present and
flow experience would be lost.
Finally, after describing what it felt like to be in an
extended present, Strand demonstrated another central
aspect of experiential wisdom—recognizing the temporary
nature of such a flow state. He commented that he could
‘‘never stay in that frame of mind for an entire day,’’ and
that kind of intensity ‘‘comes and goes.’’
There is a Fringe There: Donald Campbell
Interested in the philosophy of science and writing at a time
when methodology in psychology was comprised almost
entirely of the inherited scientific dogma of random
assignment to treatments, Donald Campbell’s methodo-
logical innovations led to increased research outside of the
Experiential Wisdom and Optimal Experience 87
123
laboratory and the consideration of new threats to validity
and reliability that would be encountered. He was honored
for these pioneering contributions by the American Psy-
chological Association (APA; Distinguished Scientific
Contribution award; APA President, 1975) and the Amer-
ican Educational Research Association (AERA; Distin-
guished Contribution to Research in Education award).
He died in 1996.
Friendly skeptical. Campbell, like Strand, was an
articulate spokesman for how to stay on a path of abiding
interest and expressed experiential wisdom in a variety of
ways. One of the more striking examples was his sugges-
tion that learning coincided with adopting a mental attitude
of ‘‘friendly skeptical.’’ For instance, a student should not
suppress their skepticism, doubt, and ambivalence regard-
ing the things they are being taught; but neither should they
immediately adopt a rebellious attitude.
If they are being taught something and they do not
understand it, they should consider the possibility that
what they have been taught is not coherent. It has
hidden assumptions. In other words they should not
take a rebellious rejection attitude, but an awareness
that this is unfinished and everybody has to pro-
nounce truth without yet having had it… I think I
have always been able to be a good student without
being a passive and gullible student.
There is an important recognition of the role of intuition
in the above comment on pronouncing truth before we have
it. In other words, we need to in some circumstances to take
a ‘‘friendly,’’ welcoming attitude toward something that is
ambiguous in order to take meaning from our social con-
texts. By looking at something as being ‘‘in need of revi-
sion,’’ rather than in need of rejection, an opportunity is
created to further one’s learning. Such a dual attitude
provides students with a way to be open to the ideas
transmitted by teachers, yet still see them as ‘‘fallible and
criticizable.’’ Such an attitude also conveys the realization
that there are passive and active phases to the meaning
making process.
Campbell described this in-between space that was
important for learning in several other ways, all of them
providing insightful illustrations of experiential wisdom.
For instance, he thought it important to have an element of
‘‘recreation’’ in one’s scholarly pursuits; otherwise the
process could turn into drudgery. ‘‘We go into academic
life because we want to make a profession out of our
hobby,’’ he commented, ‘‘and that is a very dangerous thing
to do. If you loved taking photographs as a high school
student, and you become a professional photographer, what
you did enjoy becomes a drudgery.’’ To avoid this unfor-
tunate outcome he had intellectual pursuits that were ‘‘not
close enough to home,’’ so that he could ‘‘dabble’’ in them
and exercise some choice. In other words, in addition to his
major field of study, he would become a ‘‘young outsider’’
in other areas of interest in order to enjoy them and avoid
the feeling that he had a professional obligation with respect
to them.
Individuals who lacked this recreational element, such
as students or professors who only felt a ‘‘professional
responsibility’’ to their work, or that it was only part of
their ‘‘professional self-ego,’’ were the most susceptible to
drudgery. Campbell thought they more easily fell into the
trap of thinking that ‘‘every interesting article that you see
in your own field makes you anxious because you have not
read it, or because they have done it before you have.’’
Even in one’s main field, he commented, ‘‘We should
somehow come to grips with the fact that we are only going
to dabble in the literature; keeping up with it is a sure way
to become overwhelmed.’’ Cultivating the recreational side
of scholarship also meant allowing some unhurried time
each day for solitude and not getting anxious about the fact
that time was being used for such a seemingly unproduc-
tive purpose.
Being treated as a fellow explorer. Campbell’s experi-
ential wisdom was also evident in relation to his thinking
about the kinds of social contexts that preserved the ability
to be friendly skeptical, to dabble in an area as a young
outsider, and so on. He learned this lesson in his family and
extended it to other professional contexts.
My parents treated me as an intellectual equal long
before I deserved to be treated as an intellectual
equal. So that this kind of family environment in
which children’s opinions are listened to and argued
with, but where the child feels that they are free to
argue back, is certainly a middle class blessing.
Freedom to argue back preserved the right to be an
outsider; being listened to as a respected part of a group, on
the other hand, allowed one to be an insider at the same
time.
Campbell recognized that ‘‘situational contributions’’
could affect interest and learning by over-emphasizing the
rigor of work and prematurely closing off an intuitive,
openness to experience. That is why he emphasized the
importance of finding a social context in which ‘‘you are
being treated as a fellow explorer, rather than as a passive
learner.’’ The context should encourage ‘‘equal status sci-
entific participation,’’ where colleagues were ‘‘working on
exciting issues and the interpersonal relations of people to
people are mutual encouragement, rather than competitive
put down.’’
Campbell thought that professors who were pressured to
publish a certain number of papers a year in order to retain
their jobs and gain promotion had the most to lose. They
accommodated and adapted, he thought, but ‘‘their freedom
88 K. Rathunde
123
to be creative…is being reduced by the pressure for
quickness and number.’’ Because of a few prestigious
publications in his early years, Campbell felt some ‘‘free-
dom to be wasteful of time.’’ Of course, this was not
wasteful at all in that the time was put into exploration that
eventually fed back into the quality of subsequent work.
Because he was so aware of these situational influences,
Campbell took steps to find a social context that was well
suited for his intrinsically motivated work. He explained
his point of view in the following excerpt about how he
would advise young scholars.
You have two job offers, both of them have reason-
able teaching loads. One job is going to be under high
publish or parish pressure. The other job you are
going to feel adequate and under less pressure.
Obviously the two universities have two different
national esteem levels. Which one job would you
take? I say clearly take the one where you will be free
of tenure anxiety and be free to intellectually explore.
Now, if you spend that time developing an apple
orchard rather than scholarship, well, that’s a differ-
ent matter.
He would offer the same advice to students entering a
graduate program, ‘‘Go to the place where you can enter as
soon as possible into a more or less equal status scientific
participation, rather than to a place which has high prestige
in which you will be demoted to being a freshman all over
again.’’
A self-driving momentum. As was the case in the Strand
interview, much of Campbell’s experiential wisdom was
evident in relation to protecting a ‘‘fringe’’ space for
exploration, a space for affective immediacy and intuition
to flourish. ‘‘I think that if you are blessed with curiosity,
that is a blessing for a scientific career… it is hard to keep
this curiosity from being contaminated with ambitiousness
and upward mobility and the like.’’ To preserve a space
for curiosity, he even worked questions he was thinking
about into his teaching: ‘‘teaching gave [me] more back
burners to opportunistically develop.’’ Inevitably, though,
a problem would grab him and call for meticulous work.
He noted, ‘‘But if you can keep this curiosity unanxious
and playful… it is very clear that there is a threshold of
problems. One is attracted by problems that are puzzling
but seem within reach of solutions. There is a fringe
there.’’
Campbell would show patience in the exploration pro-
cess until an idea came, but once it did, it was pursued with
fierce selective attention and coincided with a flow-like
momentum:
I would have… several afternoons a week in which…I could go to my carrel in the library with a view over
the lake and be in solitary scholarly meditation…Once a problem has grabbed me… then I do show an
amazing ability to drag that manuscript along with
me and write on it 15 min here and 15 min there… I
am able to keep a self-driving momentum going in
spite of lots of little interruptions when I am in a flow
period.
For Campbell, as for Strand, the reward of optimal
experience was the payoff of his experiential wisdom. By
protecting the opportunity for intuition, and waiting for the
appropriate moment to apply the full force of voluntary
attention, a flow-like, self-driving momentum was created.
In Dewey’s (1934) perspective, it was these integral
experiences that lured and rewarded Campbell, and
allowed him to distinguish real thought from the spurious
article.
The Capacity to Make Retrospective Judgments
Prospectively: Jonas Salk
Jonas Salk was best known for his discovery and devel-
opment of the first effective polio vaccine. Introduced in
1955, the vaccine came as an answer to one of the most
terrifying public health problems in US history. Salk was
widely hailed as a miracle worker for his 8 years of
research that went into developing the vaccine and his
refusal to profit from it. He was a recipient of the presti-
gious Lasker Award for medical research, but never
received the Nobel Prize many thought he deserved. In
1963, he founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies
in La Jolla, California. He died on June 23, 1995, at the age
of 80.
Going from the intuition department to the reasoning
department. This interview took place at the Salk Institute
in May of 1991. At one point during the interview, Salk
started discussing the beautiful setting of the Institute
which was built in 1965 by the great American architect
Louis I. Kahn. He mentioned that guests of the Institute and
faculty members often commented on the meditative effect
of the surroundings and its inspirational properties. This
effect, he said, was an intentional part of the design. He
elaborated on his discussions with Kahn about the design
and focused on one particular meeting after having a
restless night of sleep. It was at this meeting that many of
the creative elements of the design were finally resolved,
including the decision to emphasize a feeling of space and
openness by eliminating two of the proposed four build-
ings. The anecdote served to illustrate the great importance
Salk placed on ‘‘making visible the invisible.’’ The
‘‘invisible’’ referred to the insights he had during medita-
tive or sleep-like states that needed to be harvested with
Experiential Wisdom and Optimal Experience 89
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clear and rational thinking. Salk was acutely focused on
this process of moving between unconscious and conscious
states. He even attempted to notice small physiological
changes that neuroscientists suggest signal more right or
left brain activity. The following quotes illustrate the way
he conceptualized the process. The relation to concept of
experiential wisdom is obvious.
So the intuitive realm and the rational realm… reflect
both sides of the brain, separately, and by the time
you’re ready to write, whatever it is that is going on
that I’m not aware of, that comes to which words are
attached and can be expressed, is the result of the
merging of the two. So that the processing on the
right gets to the left and takes on words [and] form.
In response to a question on how the two are interre-
lated, he added:
I don’t think you can dissect it because if you did,
you would not see it… You have to let it run its
course, so to speak, in order to recognize it… I see it
that way, as going back and forth… I speak of going
from the intuition department to the reasoning
department and then back and forth to check it out to
make sure it’s still true, so to speak.
Salk intentionally tried to cultivate this bimodal process
throughout the day. For instance, he would enter a more
meditative state by walking on the beach, slowly waking
from a nap, or just sitting quietly. At such times, he would
experience ‘‘an outpouring of insights’’ or an ‘‘inner
vision’’ and he tried to calmly observe what was going on
in his mind. ‘‘It is as if anticipatory ideas arise to help put
into the future, so to speak. It’s almost as if it prepares me
for what is likely to happen.’’ After a period of calm
observation, sometimes he would try to put words to the
ideas.
I’m awakened in the night and when… I don’t quite
know what it is that is on my mind. But it eventually
surfaces, and after that point of five minutes, I begin
to see an unfolding, as if a poem or a painting or a
story or a concept begins to have taken form… I can’t
possibly go back to sleep. So, I will lie quietly and let
things happen. And after an hour I would fall into a
deep sleep unless I write, so I sit up in bed with the
light on, and I might write for a half hour, 45 minutes.
I’ve accumulated a considerable amount of material
over the last several years that I’m now beginning to
work with—actually work with me—to try to
understand or see the themes that have come forth
this way.
A second anecdote about his work designing the Salk
Institute with Louis Kahn illustrated the same dynamics.
Plans for the building were nearly complete when Salk vis-
ited the site and looked at it from a cliff. ‘‘Something dis-
turbed me,’’ he said, ‘‘and I slept restlessly that night.’’ The
following morning he met with Kahn and spontaneously
sketched out a design similar to what now constitutes the
Institute. ‘‘I didn’t know what I was doing, but that was how I
expressed it.’’ That was not the end of it, however. Salk
explained that it took 7 weeks of persistent arguing to come
to agreement and work out the final details of the design.
Intuitive and rational processes were also at play in the
development of the polio vaccine. As a second year med-
ical student Salk attended a lecture where he was told that
you could immunize against virus diseases with chemically
treated toxins; in another lecture, he was told that a person
had to experience the infection itself for immunization to
occur; that is, exposure to a chemically treated or non-
infections virus was not sufficient. ‘‘Well, it struck me that
both statements couldn’t be true,’’ Salk commented. For
the time being, Salk accepted the ambiguity and sorted the
whole thing away. When Salk had the opportunity to work
in a laboratory on an influenza virus, this implicit question
had not disappeared; instead it framed his work: ‘‘I then
chose to see whether or not this [presumed inability to
immunize] was true for flu.’’ Salk discovered that he could
introduce an inactivated virus that would stimulate the
production of an antibody, without the need for the person
to experience infection. This led to the development
of the flu vaccine. The work on the polio vaccine was an
extrapolation of this line of work.
When I had an opportunity to work on polio, I just
invoked the same idea, and attempted to see what
could be done there and it proved to be successful.
Since then, of course, all of the genetic engineering
and the other things that are done to parts of the virus
are continuations of the principle. So I tend to see
patterns, I tend to see patterns in data when I do
experiments, and I look for patterns… I recognize
patterns that become integrated and synthesized and I
see meaning.
I see, I see, I see. Salk was also fully aware of optimal
experiential states that sometimes occurred during the
intuition-rationality cycle. He spoke of the exhilaration
involved with a ‘‘revelation,’’ when he ‘‘begin to see the
relationships of things that I didn’t see before.’’ He
remarked: ‘‘The exhilaration is more of a form of a
reduction and a disappearance in the feelings… that are
associated with something going on and I’m not aware of.’’
In other words, the exhilaration followed the reduction of
the tension set up by a more intuitive mode. Such a mode
introduced a sense of agitation that needed resolution. It
was only after beginning to write after some moment of
inner vision that he would begin to say, ‘‘I see, I see, I see.’’
90 K. Rathunde
123
Salk’s way of looking at things closely resonates with
the notion of experiential wisdom. In fact, he used the
concept of wisdom to describe the creative process. Salk
commented, ‘‘I define wisdom as the capacity to make
retrospective judgments prospectively.’’ In other words,
wisdom was good judgment as to a course of action that
would later be confirmed as ‘‘good’’ if we could turn
around and analyze the choice retrospectively. Salk drew a
fitting analogy between his conception of wisdom and
immunization to again express his point about the interre-
lation of intuition and rationality.
I think of the analogy to immunization. The immune
system is capable of producing antibodies, let us say.
Now if you wait until the infection occurs, then the
virus… has a head start and the immune system has
to catch up. If you immunize first, then it’s already
had prior experience, and the system says, ‘‘well, I’ve
seen you before’’ and reacts immediately. That’s the
reflection of the wisdom of the body, the wisdom of
nature; and if you watch animals you see they have
this capacity to sense, to do things that obviously they
can’t be thinking about or calculating. So we’re just
at a higher form of that kind of functioning, adding
the reasoning part to the intuition; making it possible
to do the extraordinary things that we do and seem to
go beyond that which occurs in nature.
Bridge the both. Like Campbell, Salk had given quite a
bit of thought to those characteristics of social contexts that
provided a more congenial environment for the intuition-
rationality cycle. As a result, he tried to recruit to his
Institute individuals who had the wisdom to work in this
bimodal way. He did not want someone who could only see
the whole, or just see the part, he wanted individuals who
could ‘‘bridge the both.’’ Salk was, in other words, inter-
ested in finding kindred spirits to populate his Institute.
It comes through… a process of self-selection of like-
minded individuals… I can see there are some indi-
viduals who have qualities that work on both sides…I practice the art of science, as distinct from the way
science is practiced by many others. But there are
many scientists… who also function that way, but I
would say they’re in the minority.
Salk did not want to build a culture at the Institute where
scientists mistakenly believed in unmitigated objectivity
and did not grasp the ‘‘human side of science.’’ That’s why
recognizing kindred spirits was important. In typical
fashion, finding kindred spirits was a creative process like
any other; therefore, the same dialectical processes came
into play. In addition to contact and interaction, he noted it
is ‘‘almost like there are pheromones that are discerned, or
the equivalent of that.’’
Conclusions
A central theme presented here is that lifelong learning can
be enhanced by the capacity to make experiential course
corrections that lead back to states of interest and flow.
This capacity is not thought of as a consciously directed
process; rather, the notion of experiential wisdom was
selected to portray a more nuanced process of navigation
rather than self-regulation. If it is true that sustained
interest and optimal experience are more likely to occur
when an affectively charged intuitive mode works in con-
cert with a deliberative rational mode, then experiential
wisdom is not only the recognition that both modes are
important, but also the capacity to put oneself in situations
where the interrelation of these two modes is optimized. In
this sense, the notion shares similarities with other con-
temporary models of development (e.g., Baltes’ (1997)
selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) model)
that suggest a person’s development is best conceptualized
in terms of a continual person–context interaction.
The interviews revealed much about why Strand,
Campbell, and Salk were able to continually find episodes
of deep engagement that sustained their interest. Although
the specific approaches of each contained an eclectic mix
of techniques and strategies, there were common themes in
the three accounts that helped to clarify the meaning of
experiential wisdom and disclose what it looks like in
practice. One commonality that allowed all three to navi-
gate well was their recognition and protection of the time it
takes for intuitive insights to set the stage for subsequent
selective attention. Because intuition operates in a pre-
conscious way, it is not always easy to recognize its sig-
nificance or facilitate its operation. To do so requires a
relaxed openness, great patience, and the capacity to tol-
erate considerable ambiguity. It was in this area that the
interviews revealed the most fascinating insights.
All three were careful to let intuition do its work without
shortchanging it and cutting it off prematurely. To
accomplish this, all three had unique strategies to delay the
onset of rational processing until it could be optimally
effective. Strand tried to keep his eyes and ears open and
‘‘mouth shut’’ while in a receptive mode. He cultivated
multiple starting points for a way into a poem and used
distractions like solitaire, driving, music, errands, and even
other writing projects, so that he did not rush the process of
paying attention. Campbell adopted a ‘‘friendly skeptical’’
attitude that preserved openness without sacrificing a crit-
ical awareness. He did so by thinking of something
encountered (e.g., an idea) as tentatively true but in ‘‘need
of revision.’’ He steadfastly protected some ‘‘recreation’’ in
scholarly pursuits where he had freedom to ‘‘waste time’’
and ‘‘dabble’’ in areas where he was an outsider. To let new
ideas simmer on the ‘‘back burners’’ he might retreat to a
Experiential Wisdom and Optimal Experience 91
123
library carrel with a view of the lake, or integrate the ideas
into a course he was currently teaching. He avoided com-
petitive pressures (e.g., for quick publications, feeling
responsible to read everything in one’s field) that would
monopolize time and crowd out other essential pursuits,
even if this meant shunning contexts that conferred more
prestige. Finally, Salk intentionally cultivated physical
environments that contained beauty and awe, and under-
stood that a walk on the beach might be just as important
for scholarship and creativity as diligent work in a lab. This
insight is consistent with ancient wisdom about the
importance of nature and a growing body of contemporary
empirical work on its benefits (Kaplan 1995). He learned
how to sit quietly and calmly after a nap, or after waking up
in the middle of the night, to see whether there were any
ideas to cultivate. He tried to surround himself with artist-
scientists who understood the ‘‘human side of science.’’ He
even tried to notice physiological changes that might
indicate right or left brain processing.
The second commonality across all the interviews had to
do with the equally important component of rational and
voluntary attention to work out a problem. Although the
interviews had less variety on this component of experi-
ential wisdom, it was clear that Strand, Campbell, and
Salk—when the moment was right—had a fierce capacity
for hard work. Strand recognized when the time came to
‘‘get rid’’ of a poem, and worked relentlessly on it until he
could move on to something new. Campbell admitted that
he when the time came to write, he showed ‘‘an amazing
ability’’ to drag a manuscript along with him and work on it
continuously, even if distractions split the work into 15-
min intervals. Finally, Salk had a stubborn streak that
sharpened his focus to realize his vision, whether it was
years of dogged work in the laboratory or weeks of arguing
with the architect of his Institute.
A third commonality was perhaps the most important:
each recognized the significance of moments of deep
engagement of flow that reinforced and refreshed a path of
sustained interest and learning. Experiential wisdom is not
just the understanding that intuitive and voluntary modes
must work synchronistically to sustain interest, it is the
realization that neither mode in isolation can generate the
total involvement and intensification of energy needed to
trigger the subjective rewards of flow. The experiential
wisdom of Strand, Campbell, and Salk set in motion a
recurring cycle of finding a problem in need of resolution
and solving the problem that was introduced. This cycle
maintained an intrinsic rhythm in their learning processes.
Only along such a dialectical path, and the reversals of
boredom and anxiety associated with it, could episodes of
deep engagement be realized. Each intimately knew these
moments. Strand referred to an ‘‘extended present,’’ and his
phenomenological description of these states precisely
mirrored descriptions of flow. Campbell talked about a
‘‘self-driving momentum’’ when ideas started to ‘‘flow.’’
Salk used the more traditional terms of ‘‘revelation’’ and
‘‘exhilaration’’ to describe moments of flow.
Future Directions for Thought on Experiential Wisdom
The concept of experiential wisdom helps to answer the
question: how is it that some individuals are able to make
interest abide and experience more frequent episodes of
deep engagement? Although all three interviews presented
were with males, previous work suggests that the same
combination of intuition and rationality is also related to
the abiding interest and lifelong learning of females (see
Rathunde 1995). Furthermore, empirical evidence using
the experience sampling method (ESM) reinforces the
interviews and shows that male and female adolescents
who successfully develop their talents are better able to
coordinate their affect and cognition in states of optimal
experience (see Csikszentmihalyi et al. 1997). For these
reasons, exploring the potential of teaching experiential
wisdom to students or other individuals who are struggling
to stay engaged is a worthwhile goal for the future thought
and research. However, a more important question that has
an even greater scope for application emerges from these
interviews: how is experiential wisdom developed? There
was much less information in the interviews on this crucial
subject.
There were some promising leads in the Campbell and
Salk interviews with respect to how social contexts (e.g.,
families and schools) affected the development of experi-
ential wisdom. Campbell, in particular, pointed to being
treated as an intellectual equal in his family, even before he
became one. He also stressed the importance of school and
work environments that reduced competitive pressure and
supported the values of exploration and interpersonal
respect. Salk wanted to populate his Institute with kindred
spirits, those who were part artist and part scientist. In this
way, he could create a context that placed an equally strong
emphasis on intuition and rationality.
There are in these brief comments some strong con-
nections to the literature on the kinds of family and school
contexts that support intrinsic motivation and interest
(Anderman et al. 1999; Brophy 1998; Rathunde and
Csikszetnmihalyi 2005; Sternberg 2001; Wentzel 1998). It
may be that contexts that promote more frequent experi-
ences of interest and flow are the same type of contexts
that support—over the long term—the development of
experiential wisdom. This possibility has far-reaching
implications and should be pursued in the future. Some
well-intentioned family and school contexts over-empha-
size the support of playful exploration; others put a
92 K. Rathunde
123
premium on competitive pressures in an effort to boost
productivity. From the perspective of experiential wisdom,
both kinds of contexts may undermine what is hoped for,
namely, lifelong learning and abiding interest.
Acknowledgment The author would like to thank Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi for allowing access to the interviews from his study of
creativity in later life.
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