Intellectual knowledge is severable from practice, and this applies to the rest of the Western tradition, from art and architecture to literature and philosophy. In all of these, knowledge without works is dead, and universities teaching about them may be no more than museum tours of the intellectual and artistic artifacts of the past. Wisdom becomes knowledge, and knowledge declines into information.
I was fortunate that the nuns who taught in my grade school encouraged us to explore culture on our own, pointing out to us that the Philadelphia Museum of Art was among the best. It was good to get there from where we lived — a bus to the El and the El to Center City, then a nice walk along the Parkway to the museum (along the way was the Rodin Museum). The Philadelphia Orchestra was well-regarded, too, as it still is. All of this served as the foundation for one of the great blessings in my life.
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