Monday, April 20, 2009

wonder ball

Many of the wonders cited in this reading such as magnets, dolphins, and volcanoes are not so wondrous to modern day citizens. Similarly, children's wonder is often looked upon with a longing for something that we as adults cannot or do not experience the same way. In both cases the latter has a greater understanding of the way in which the world works. To what extent is understanding/knowledge related to wonder?

1 comment:

  1. Well wonder is something that we all seem to crave which can be explained as a desire to create a familiarity with our world by the exploration of the unknown. The text talks about how the fascination changes a little bit when the wonders were close to home as opposed to far away and that a classification difference was created between wonders that were still normal in nature as opposed to those that were abnormal. This seems to show that people call wonders what is not understood to them and desire to seek these things out and document them in an effort to better understand the world. The far off wonders were not used as tools for understanding as obviously as those close by at all times (Aquinas did a good job of doing this) but all the fascination with wonders was centered around a curiosity about the world. So I guess my answer to you question would be that wonders relate to understanding insofar as we call wonders what we do not understand and we actively seek these things out so that we can classify them. To call something a wonder is to say that it is out of our current realm of understanding.

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