Excessive wonder ( admiration) could slide into astonishment ( étonnement), thereby arresting rather than triggering the quest for explanation. Descartes admitted that wonder was the essential stimulus to inquiry, but fretted that the stimulus could easily become an addictive drug. Striking a balance between just enough and too much wonder became something of an obsession with early modern philosophers, especially those, like Bacon and Descartes, who were intent on reforming the foundations of natural science. This is why wonder was long considered to be a passion at once necessary but ultimately unbecoming to any seeker of knowledge, second only to fear, to which it was closely akin, as a badge of dishonor. Wonder is not only a peculiarly human passion it is also one that, at least on this account, underscores the limits of human knowledge. Wonder is a barometer of ignorance: the learned experience it rarely God, never. the eclipse that transfixes the ignorant peasant but not the learned astronomer) miracles ( miracula) are inexplicable to everyone. What is the difference? Thomas Aquinas answers: marvels ( mirabilia) are inexplicable to most but not all people (e.g. Explanation lies at the heart of the distinction between marvels and miracles in the Latin Christian tradition. At least within the classical philosophical tradition, from Aristotle to Descartes (and arguably beyond, to Adam Smith and even to Kant), this negative correlation between wonder and explanation is strong and tenacious.
We are delighted but no longer discombobulated what was once an earthquake of the soul is subdued into an agreeable frisson. Aesthetic appreciation may linger (it is no accident that the vernacular descendants of the Latin word for wonder, admiratio, convey esteem), but composure has returned. The marvel that stopped us in our tracks-an aurora borealis, cognate words in languages separated by continents and centuries, the peacock’s tail-becomes only an apparent marvel once explained. Therein lies the paradox of wonder: it is the beginning of inquiry (Descartes remarks that people deficient in wonder “are ordinarily quite ignorant”), but the end of inquiry also puts an end to wonder. It reveals that there are more things in heaven and earth than have been dreamt of in our philosophy ideally, it also spurs us on to find an explanation for the marvel. Above all, at least in classical accounts like those of Aristotle and Descartes, wonder both diagnoses and cures ignorance.
Wonder widens the eyes, opens the mouth, stops the heart, freezes thought. In these and many other accounts of wonder, both soul and senses are ambushed by a puzzle or a surprise, something that catches us unawares and unprepared. “For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize,” explains Aristotle Descartes made wonder “the first of the passions,” and the only one without a contrary, opposing passion. Wonder always comes at the beginning of inquiry. This love-hate relationship between wonder and science started with science itself.
WONDERS OF SCIENCE PHENOMENA PROFESSIONAL
Modern popularizations of science make much of wonder-but expressions of that passion are notably absent in professional publications. Romantic poets accused science of not just neutralizing wonder but of actually killing it. As philosophers never tire of repeating, only those ignorant of the causes of things wonder: the solar eclipse that terrifies illiterate peasants is no wonder to the learned astronomer who can explain and predict it. Wonder is a spur to scientific inquiry but also a reproach and even an inhibition to inquiry. Science and wonder have a long and ambivalent relationship.
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