Helen de Cruz, "Wonder"

Twinkle twinkle little philosophical notion...

For as long as graduate methods seminars in the history and philosophy of science have assigned Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park's landmark publication Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150-1750, we have wondered about the nature and history of wonder.

Part of what makes this seed by Helen De Cruz so interesting in the context of that extended field of inquiry is the perspective that comes from considering wonder as a "philosophical emotion."

In this seed, she reflects on wonder as it motivates the practice and process of inquiry in the sciences, broadly conceived, and including a kind of genealogy of the process of wonder.

At what point does wonder commence? (Once you have a scientific framework, and then you start seeing weird things? Once we're made aware of our own ignorance, at which point wonder helps us to evaluate things?)

And how and why does it continue?

And at what point should, or does, wonder cease?

Bio

Helen De Cruz is Danforth Chair in the Humanities in the Department of Philosophy at St. Louis University. She has published widely on the philosophy of science, and her books include Religious Disagreement (Cambridge University Press, 2019).