The temperature of wisdom...

Cold wisdom speaks to the brain. It borrows from external experience, provides facts and tactics, management tips and heuristics, any critical information that demands immediate, precise, instructional delivery. Cold wisdom would be warped and degraded by any emotional content. It is practical in nature, concerned with immediate survival in the here and now and coping with the stuff of daily existence.

Warm wisdom speaks to the soul. It borrows from internal experience, addresses pain and mystery and eternal questions of life and death. It soothes anxieties, consoles the world-weary, and enlightens the confused or the distracted. It speaks to the core individual in their own language. It is irrepressibly human. Humanity at its pulsing, conceptual best.

Note that the drowning victim needs neither warm nor cold wisdom. He or she will take hold of any branch or hand that's within reach. Emergencies are rarely philosophical events.