Retirement has been as a dream to look forward to by many, but it also represents the imposition for some of an enforced state of giving up career, thinking, and risk. For these people, retirement is an artificial state bearing no relationship to the actual life cycle of those who may yet expect to live for ten or more years and who may want to work for a good part of those years. We see this more often in religious leaders and politicians, in whom it seems to be acceptable to be older and in whom age is thought to bring wisdom. There are many different definitions of wisdom. She is careful to state that the literature does not always show the old to be wise or the young to lack wisdom.
Wisdom seems to have a function throughout life in terms of guiding development.
The question about wisdom naturally evolving from intellectual aging is not really settled in this or other work, and wisdom is defined differently from mechanical and pragmatic points of view. He relates wisdom to creativity, looking at psychometric indicators and plotting intellectual creativity against age. He determines that precocity and production of intellectual material remains strong throughout life in higher intellectual groups. The amount of writing on wisdom is far less than on creativity and far more specuative. Energy and aggression to produce and be creative are more likely to occur at a younger age.