Chapters 8 and 9

One of the things that really got me thinking when I read Chapter 8 was the role of wonder and curiousity in today's world and the stature that intellectuals have in our society. While Daston's Chapter 8 was more specific to natural philosophy, I'm speaking more generally in terms of wonder/study/knowledge. Do the curious continue to be looked down upon? While education is highly prized, is there still a sense in which the curious are rejected by certain members of society?

I find it interesting that something so simple, curiousity, could take on so many faces and be viewed in so many different ways throughout history.

On a final note, I'm not sure if we were supposed to read the Epilogue or not, but I enjoyed (and agree with) the following passage. I remember when I first started reading the book I was struck by how little has changed with regard to our attitudes toward wonder:

"There are striking continuities between earlier and contemporary responses to wonders. The tabloids sold in grocery stores, like sections of the Guinness Book of Records, contain many of the wonders in early modern broadsides. Indeed, some of the wonders so closely duplicate seventeenth century oddities - a stockroom clerk who changes sex, a baby who sprouts gold teeth - that one suspects their authors are pillaging the Philosophical Transactions and Journal des Scavans" (365).

Indeed.