The whole idea is that individual papers are supposed to be exploratory, throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. They're supposed to be a deluge of information.
But then every decade or so a team of academics take it upon themselves to serve as editors to a handbook, which attempts to survey the field in terms of history, where the most value has been found so far (and what hasn't panned out), and current promising directions. Usually something like 20-50 chapters, each contributed by a different author.
If you want to get into the wisdom of a field, the first thing you do is pull out the most recent 800-page handbook, read the first few chapters, and then drill down in your area of interest on the remaining part.
To say there "are no prizes for wisdom" is absurd, when being selected to publish in a handbook (or being an editor) is prestigious, a mark that you've very much "made it" in the field.
And of course there are plenty of other things that serve similar roles, such as literature review papers or similar. (In philosophy you can write a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article, for instance.)
If you aren't finding wisdom anywhere, it means you're simply not looking right.
(And this isn't even to mention the fact that at some point somebody will popularize major progress in a field in a general-audience book, e.g. when Daniel Goleman wrote the book "Emotional Intelligence" or Stephen Hawking wrote "A Brief History of Time".)