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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: De Cruz, Helen, 1978– author.
Title: Wonderstruck : how wonder and awe shape the way we think /
Helen De Cruz.
Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2024] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023028348 (print) | LCCN 2023028349 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780691232126 (hardback) | ISBN 9780691232171 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Wonder (Philosophy) | BISAC: PHILOSOPHY /
Epistemology | SCIENCE / Natural History
Classification: LCC B105.W65 D42 2024 (print) | LCC B105.W65
(ebook) | DDC 128—dc23/eng/20231004
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023028348
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023028349
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
Editorial: Rob Tempio and Chloe Coy
Production Editorial: Ali Parrington
Jacket Design: Heather Hansen
Production: Erin Suydam
Publicity: Maria Whelan
Jacket image: Comet Donati, 1858. Science History Images /
Alamy Stock Photo
This book has been composed in Arno
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Johan, my husband and philosophical friend
c on t e n t s
List of Illustrations ix
1 Freedom to Wonder 1
vii
viii con t e n ts
Acknowledgments 181
Notes 183
References 197
Index 213
I l lu s t r at ions
ix
x L i s t o f I l l u s t r a t io n s
Freedom to Wonder
Amateur Astronomy
“Come on, everyone out of the house!” My neighbor called
his wife and children to come out and gaze at the sky. We all
stood in that quiet suburban street in Saint Louis, Missouri,
watching for a while, waiting for the blood moon to make a furtive
2 chapter 1
Words such as the ancient Greek thauma and the medieval ad-
miratio encompass both awe and wonder. As w e’ll see in chap-
ter 3, contemporary psychologists also treat them as related.
Awe and wonder share two salient features. First, they are
epistemic emotions, emotions that motivate us to explore our
environment and learn more about it.5 These emotions are con-
cerned with obtaining knowledge and related m ental states.6
Epistemic emotions include curiosity, doubt, wonder, awe, and
surprise. While scientists experience such emotions often, they
occur in many domains of h uman life: for example, in gossip
about extramarital affairs, when we want to know what happens
in a novel, and when w e’re puzzling out a sudoku grid. Non-
human animals can also feel curiosity at a new feature of their
environment. Your cat might find a novel way into the kitchen
pantry. Though it sometimes proves fatal to cats, curiosity is
very often advantageous.
Some epistemic feelings let us know that we know. Th ese
include the feeling of knowing, the feeling of certainty, and the
feeling of correctness. For example, you feel sure that “1666” is
the answer to the question, “When did the Great Fire of Lon-
don occur?” Feeling that you know, even that you are sure, is
not infallible. We can be mistaken in those feelings. Other epis-
temic feelings alert our attention to what we do not yet know.
Curiosity, awe, and wonder fall into this category. As with the
feelings of knowing, we can ask w hether feelings of not-yet-
knowing are necessarily right. It does seem that if you wonder
at something, there is something that prompted you to wonder.
This feeling alerts you to the fact that your current body of
knowledge—the schemas, heuristics, and other information
you use—did not prepare you for the thing you wonder at. As
such, wonder is a useful emotion, b ecause it points to gaps
in what you thought you knew. For example, many of my
6 chapter 1
all that makes survival worth securing. The social affections, all
the various forms of play, the thrilling intimations of art, the
delights of philosophic contemplation, the rest of religious
emotion, the joy of moral self-approbation, the charm of
fancy and of wit—some or all of t hese are absolutely re-
quired to make the notion of mere existence tolerable.20
It is on the passions alone that all the good and evil of this life
depends
For the rest, the soul can have pleasures of its own. But the
pleasures common to it and the body depend entirely on the
passions, so that persons whom the passions can move most
deeply are capable of enjoying the sweetest p leasures of this
life. It is true that they may also experience the most bitter-
ness when they do not know how to put t hese passions to
good use and when fortune works against them. But the
chief use of wisdom lies in its teaching us to be masters of our
passions and to control them with such skill that the evils
which they cause are quite bearable, and even become a
source of joy.25
questions such as, Why do our molars seem s haped for grinding
food and our incisors for cutting it? How did the universe orig-
inate? What’s a comet? How does the eye work? What are the
basic human emotions?
The intimate connection between wonder and philosophy is
the focus of this chapter. In particular, I investigate the idea that
wonder is a motivating passion that urges us to do philosophy,
in both its ancient and its modern sense. As w e’ll see, especially
since the early modern period (since the late sixteenth c entury),
philosophers have employed an increasingly rich and nuanced
vocabulary to think about wonder, distinguishing different
kinds of wonder, and differentiating wonder from awe. In e arlier
sources, awe and wonder were denoted by the same words, in-
cluding thaumazein in Greek and admiratio in Latin. The histor-
ical context is important to understand their continued role in
philosophy. With this in mind, I present a bird’s eye view of the
precursors to our notions of awe and wonder in Western phi-
losophy through works by Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and
Adam Smith.
Pascal then invites the reader to consider a mite with its tiny
body that shows “incomparably more minute parts, legs with
joints, veins in its legs, blood in its veins, humors in this blood,
drops in the humors, vapors in t hese drops.”24 You can just go
on until your thought is exhausted and you can’t imagine any-
thing of an even smaller scale. This might lead you to think the
scaling down ends there, but you would be wrong:
— Miksi? — Kai hän niin uskoi. Moni muukin luulee, ettei missään
muualla voi olla hyvä olla kuin luonnollisten vanhempain luona.
Missä on hyvä, siellä on, ja useimmilla kylläkin on hyvä. Mutta tiedän
varmaan, että on paljon lapsia — niitä on enemmän kuin
otaksutaankaan — joiden olisi parempi olla muualla ja jotka muilta
saisivat enemmän rakkautta kuin saavat omilta vanhemmiltaan. Ja
riippuuhan kaikki kuitenkin siitä, kuinka paljon rakkautta saa.
Mutta sen jälkeen sattui sangen usein, että illoin tartuit käsiini
kuiskaten:
15.
Entä jälkimaailma!
*****
Mutta kun aamu valkeni, olivat kaikki syvämietteisyydet häipyneet
itsestänsä. Kahvi höyrysi verannan pöydällä ja uimahousut riippuivat
kaiteella. Ja ulapalla lähtivät ensimmäiset aallot liikkeelle
aamutuulen herättäminä Ensimmäiset purjeet välkkyivät auringossa
ja siellä täällä joku varhainen liikehtijä meloi kanootissaan rantaa
pitkin.
16.
*****
Sen varjo oli syvä, sen harmaat rungot mahtavat, valotäpliä siellä
täällä, auringon läikät hohtaen läpi lehtiverkon. Ja korkealla latvoissa
oli vaalea, mehevä vihreys.
*****
*****
Entä suomalaiset! Silloin oli vielä se aika, jolloin meidän piti istua
kotona harmistuneina siitä, ettemme missään saaneet olla
näkyvissä.
Eikö totta, Yrjö, sitä oli vaikea sulattaa? Se harmi paisutti mieltäsi
siinä pystyttäessäsi telttaasi. Jospa edes nuo tanskalaiset pojat
olisivat ymmärtäneet panna arvoa sille mikä heillä oli, mutta eivät he
käsittäneet sitä onneksi eikä miksikään. Pitivät sitä vain itsestään
selvänä asiana. Sitä oman maasi kohtaloa ajattelit viikon varrella yhä
enemmän, varsinkin päivän parhaimpana hetkenä, sinä hetkenä,
joka sinut eniten tenhosi.
Se oli heti aamulla. Ensin juoksivat kaikki pojat uimaan, ja siinä oli
polskuntaa ja huitomista ja huutamista. Mutta hetkeä myöhemmin oli
suuri kenttä aivan äänetön. Seitsemänsataa poikaa kiinnitti
katseensa yhteen ainoaan pisteeseen, lipputankoon kummulla — ja
siihen nousi hitaasti Tanskan lippu. Kaikki päät paljastuivat ja tangon
juurella soitettiin kansallislaulu. Ensin Tanskan, sitten Norjan ja
Ruotsin. Viimein Englannin.
*****