Reading books can certainly contribute to wisdom, but becoming truly wise involves more than just acquiring knowledge. How does reading fit into the bigger picture?

In order to understand how the act of reading books contribute to wisdom, we have to ask ourselves what wisdom is. I mean: what is the fundamental element of wisdom? What is it's essence?

We can have knowledge, inteligence, will, feelings, money, opportunities, but no one of these elements alone can make a wise person, right?

Wisdom comes by conscience, wich we can define as the accurate perception of reality. In other words: the real knowledge about the reality.

Now things become more clear: we've conscience about the air we're breathing, because we're always breathing. It's a sensorial way by wich we have conscience about it, and the similar sensorial funcions are in exercise to allow us to know about the reality around us.

However, this is just an aspect of it, because there is another aspect of reality that we can only perceive if we study (reading books).

A doctor is much more conscious than me about human anathomy. Nevertheless, for many years (maybe centuries), medicine hasn't the cure for many deseases, because more study was necessary in order to improve conscience about other aspects of reality that, at the time, there wasn't certainty about it.

Can you see it? Read a single good book can amplify the horizon of perception in such a way, that conscience of reality can be free to transcend the superficiality of being circunscribed in our era mindset.

So, we'll be allowed to understand the depth of the issues that today we're questioning as if they was something new, but, by reading, we'll discover that they was always here and formed the History of mankind.

Imagine the deepness that we can achieve by reading several books! Through maturity and systematic knowledge, we can understand the depth of the issues that we are dealing with in our lives or by contemplating the fundamental issues of mankind.

Thanks for the question!!