Do we live in a society that values wonder today? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Several years ago, Josef Pieper argued that leisure was the basis for culture. He meant by this more than that we should go and have fun. He meant that we should be free to contemplate and appreciate reality and celebrate. In the later chapters, he especially emphasizes wonder.
Wonder is something our society has lost. We are told we need to live in the real world. We are told that some beliefs are often childish. Some people say “In a scientific age, how can anyone believe XYZ?”
He explains that science can in a sense explain everything about the material world. Philosophy, meanwhile, will never exhaust a single fly. It will always be asking questions, and this is not a downside. If anything, it puts science in a worse position because if you can explain everything about the universe, and if matter is all that there is, you hypothetically can, then what else is there.
Consider the question that came up in the Supreme Court nominee hearings a few years ago. What is a woman? Part of us laugh because the answer is so basic, and from a scientific perspective, it is. However, from a philosophical perspective, that is a deep question. One of the most profound questions you can ask about anything is what it is.
Wonder is the state when we are held in amazement by something. We realize that there is something greater than just the material composition of the thing in question. A young man can easily describe the body of his female lover, but he knows there is something greater before him than just her body.
In our age, it has become common to think that if you explain something scientifically, then that means there can be no otherworldly elements to it. However, Socrates, in a Peter Kreeft book where Socrates shows up at a modern college, is told the sun is not a god because we know it is a big ball of gas and fire. Socrates asks “How do we know that that is not what the god’s body is?” It could be that both are true. They’re not, but this is a hypothetical.
Dan Barker describes having his Christian brother drive with him and try to explain the wonder of the mountains. In response, Barker gives a scientific explanation of how mountains come to be. His brother says that he just has to ruin everything, but what kind of response is that? Could it be that yes, this is how mountains come to be, but yet there is still something wondrous about them?
I find one of the tragedies of Richard Dawkins is that he is truly a brilliant scientific writer. There is no sarcasm in that. When I have read some of his writings and he talks about science, it is a marvel. I find myself getting excited about the world of animals especially that he is describing. The problem is that he then wants to dispense of all these silly theistic ideas and then kills the very wonder that he has just described. As is said in An Atheist Defends Religion:
For religionists, therefore, the scientific worldview desacralizes nature, leaving it like a machine to be observed and manipulated, rather than an object of reverence as a creation of God. For this reason, the scientific response disappoints religious believers. Looking up to the night sky and feeling the immensity of existence is only the beginning of the religious quest for transcendence. For believers, wonder has to be met with oneness, a sense that the universe embraces them. But science does not provide a satisfactory way for believers to feel at home in the universe. That is why so many people turn to religion.
Sheiman, Bruce. An Atheist Defends Religion: Why Humanity Is Better Off with Religion than without It (p. 159). DK. Kindle Edition.
Now is this to say we need to dispense with the scientific enterprise? God forbid! It has done a marvelous benefit to mankind and MUST be kept up. The problem is if you make it ultimate, you will kill the wonder. We are meant to study and learn about the material universe, but the material universe is not the end. It is a pointer to something greater than itself. A finger is good for pointing to the moon, but woe to the man who mistakes a finger for the moon.
We should indeed scientifically study the fly, but let us never stop philosophizing about it either.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)