Wonders of the World [antikvár]

INTRODUCTIONSimon GoldhillT^ HIS BOOK is motivated by two of the most basic human responses to the world. The first is toonder. 'Wonder is the beginning of philosophy,' said Socrates, a man who died for his philosophical principles. And Plato and Aristotle agreed. For the great philosophers, philosophy is the crowning triumph of human achievement, and it finds its origin in the moment of bafflement and awe a human feels when faced by the amazing sights of nature. Wonder is the beginning of asking how and why. For nearly 2,500 years this idea has been repeated. So Francis Bacon, the greatest of English Renaissance scientific minds, called wonder 'the seed of knowledge', and Ralph Waldo Emerson, in the newly emergent society of nineteenth-century America, gave his own twist to the thought when he wrote, 'All men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.' Amazement at the world is the motor of human curiosity and progress.Wonder not only prompts science and philosophy, but also the emotions of religion. Thomas Carlyle, one of the most influential of Victorian thinkers, writes: 'Worship is transcendent wonder.' As the book of Exodus sums up the Israelites' escape from Egypt, 'When Israel saw the wondrous power which the Lord had wielded against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and had faith in the Lord.' The wonders of the Lord demand fear and faith. The Gospels and the Lives of the Saints repeatedly record the response of the disciples and the crowd to the miracles ofjesus and the calm suffering of the saints: 'and they were amazed'. The fear, awe and confusion of ordinary people at the extraordinary events before them are a fundamental sign of the recognition of the divine. When the world is seen as God's creation, then amazement at the world is itself a feeling of religious wonder. That is why Carlyle can write: 'The man who cannot wonder, and does not habitually wonder (and worship) is but a pair of spectacles, behind which there is no Eye.' For Carlyle, if you do not look at the world with wonder, you do not have eyes to see, and (with a common enough pun) you cannot be a real 'I', a truly living and feeling person.Carlyle thought that the worship of great men - heroes - was and should be a driving force of history (no surprise that it was Carlyle that was still being read to Hitler in his last days in the bunker). But a different, more enchanting kind of wonder at other people motivates theCenturies of wonder: astronomers at the top of Mount Athos, in the Picturehook of Sir John Mandeville's Travels, ?-.1410