Chapter 1, Daston

I'm glad to see that we're finally coming around to the last, and in my opinion, most difficult sensation of all the book topics: wonder. We've explored truth, knowledge, understanding and now we're onto something else that feels about as subjective, if not more, than the aforementioned topics. While reading through the introduction and first chapter, I too noticed the myriad of emotions that seem to spring from wonder. I had a harder time accepting that feelings of wonder were once thought to be due to one's own ignorance. At a logical level, it makes sense that one feels wonder when they're introduced to a novel idea they find to be brilliant, and therefore, your own lacking knowledge of the topic seems to be genius. However, thus far, I feel that wonder translates to an emotion closer to love: each time it's experienced, it's a little different, but the sensation is never one you're used to feeling. Perhaps wonder is something more related to an individual's own personality, being that certain people will find wonder in events while others won't. This leads me to my question that I continually thought about as I read through today's readings: Does additional knowledge of something necessarily always have to reduce one's wonder of the subject? Is some base knowledge necessary in order to really appreciate the beauty of an event, or does knowledge simply muck up what otherwise would be something wonderful?