John Oulton Wisdom (29 December 1908 – 30 January 1993), cousin of Cambridge professor John Wisdom (with whom he is sometimes confused[1]) was "an important contributor to philosophy and to psychoanalysis" who made "original contributions to the mind-body problem, to philosophy of science, to cybernetics, to the theory of psychosomatic disorder, and to psychoanalytic theory".

[3] He was educated at Earlsfort House School, also attended by Samuel Beckett,[4] and then at Trinity College Dublin, where he studied under the Hegelian scholar Henry Stewart Macran.

Graduating in 1931, he continued postgraduate studies until 1933 when he received a doctoral degree for a thesis on Hegel.

Wisdom also served as an editor of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science from 1952 until 1963.

In the mid-sixties Wisdom would move to North America, teaching at several US universities before finally moving to Canada and to a professorship in philosophy and social science at York University, Toronto, where he remained until his retirement in 1979.