Who is your nominee for wise person?

An orderly mind? Nietzche pointed out that the process of thinking is a chaotic one, not at all as orderly and neat as thinkers like to present it.
Coherency is an additive from the thinker, not the idea itself, and if this is too rigidly applied it will damage creativity.

Well said.

I have been reading a lot about Otto Rank's theory regarding creativity and the will. I think there is a strong correlation between what an artists does and what a self-learner does in the process of trying to understand. Understanding is an extension of knowing. It extends knowing into meaning, which adds a large emotional factor to knowing.

As I see it, self learning is a creative process. It is a matter of try and fail, same as making creative works. Experience helps, it gives confidence in one's abilities, which is all one really needs.

A friend of mine always says that he isn't very good at improvising melodies on the guitar. He compares himself to me, but I've been doing it for decades, so I have more practice.
But when we play and sing, and I start playing some chords that he doesn't know, he starts playing melodies. Often he forgets that he doesn't know how, and the stuff that he plays is really good.

The trick is recognizing and admitting "failure" when one sees it. As I've remarked in previous threads, the analogy between learning and artistic creation is an attractive one and has its uses, but it has its abuses as well. Those who treat empirical knowledge like an aesthetic experience run the risk of thinking there is some correlation between the validity of the knowledge and the pleasure afforded by the aesthetic experience: the more pleasurable the aesthetic experience, the more correct the knowledge must be. The abstract and personal nature of the aesthetic experience has always been designed to evade criticism, which may work for art but doesn't work so well for learning. I wouldn't want to throw out the "aesthetic model of self-learning" altogether, but I would add that the model requires a certain degree of intellectual honesty.

I agree shapeless.

One thing is recognizing and admitting failure, but in my particular line of creativity (I'm a song writer) the success or failure is determined by how many people like what I do. Similarly, the success or failure of learning and discovering is often determined by how many people believe in you or agree with you.

Otto Rank speaks about the energy that is latent within the creative act. I consider that understanding is a creative act of meaning and I am convinced that the energy is created in the process of certain types of learning and understanding. This energy is a very important consideration I think.

Good stuff guys. I do believe that all real learning is auto-didactic. Even the appreciation of someone else's art is a creative act. And this applies without doubt to learning in general.