Ion Grumeza

Author, historian, educator, and philosopher

Chapter 2: A Review of Literature

I began my search for literary resources with a survey of linguistics. In Webster’s New American Dictionary I found “wonder” described as a cause of astonishment or surprise, a feeling aroused by something extraordinary; to feel curiosity or doubt; and, simply, a marvel or a miracle. The Dutch use the same word, wonder, and the French merveille likewise reflects the same meanings.

The Romanian dictionary refers to it as mirare (amazement) and revelatie (revelation), implying a shroud of mystery. According to this definition, a person experiencing wonder is inmarmurit, which literally means to look like a marble statue, unmoving and dumbfounded. I like this definition and the mystery associated with it, which reflect the approach I have taken in my study.

A search of print and electronic databases pointed to only a few books dealing with wonder as a primary or secondary subject, while the spiritual aspect of wonder has been touched upon by a handful of curious pioneers in various fields. Robert C. Fuller, a professor of Religious Studies at Bradley University, is one. In his Wonder: From Emotion to Spirituality (2006), he uses different academic disciplines to demonstrate the origin and function of wonder in our lives. He comments in his Acknowledgments on the scarcity of findings for a study of wonder: “Imagine my sudden loss of confidence when I realized that the word “wonder” couldn’t be found in the index of any of the thirty psychology texts I consulted!” Nevertheless, he managed to put together enough convincing information to write a book about such an ignored subject.

He explains how emotion and evolution led to wonder, the relationship between wonder and psychological development, the way wonder shaped the lives of great men, and other related subjects. In his chapter entitled “Wonder, Emotion, and Religious Sensibility” he focuses on emotions and self-consciousness, trying to explain how wonder may play a role in human religiosity, while using mostly lay methods to prove the perception of wonder as motivation for religious thoughts.

Fuller acknowledges (2006:136): “Wonder is thus a stimulus to metaphysical thought. Moreover, it motivates sustained engagement with the world around us. It unleashes our capacities for creative activity and for caring for others in their own right. We should therefore expect a close association between emotion of wonder and religion.” In the final page of his book (2006:158), he concludes: “Of course, wonder alone cannot sustain productive relationships with the surrounding world over the long run. It is true that wonder doesn’t mobilize perception or cognition in ways that conform to the requirements of physical survival. It is also true that we can efficiently go through life without delighting in experiences of wonder. Many people do.”

However, in his closing lines Fuller eulogizes wonder, writing (2006:158): “No other emotion so readily kindles a reverence for life. And thus although you can surely go through life without a developed sense of wonder, it is equally true that a life shaped by wonder is attuned to the widest possible world of personal fulfillment.” He mostly envisions wonder as a stepping stone from child-fantasies to realistic interpretations that support the basic needs of life.

In her book Wonder and Wisdom (2006) Celia Deane-Drummond states that “Wonder can mean different things to different people, because a contradictory and amazing situation or event...” She goes on to say (2006:2) that “so-called wonder marked the outermost limits of what might be ‘natural’, while wonder as a passion showed the limits of human knowing, presenting to the human mind something previously unknown.” To this British professor of theology and biological sciences, “wonder could mean a mixture of fear, reverence, pleasure and bewilderment” (2006:2). She briefly reviews how wonder was perceived in Medieval thinking and the Christian religion, and she then focuses her attention on scientific data about wonder and wisdom.

Equally blunt and non-committal about mingling wonder with spirituality is Tom Christenson, professor of philosophy at Capital University and author of Wonder and Critical Reflections (2001). He believes wonder is just a natural response to what, among other reactions, may “shock us into a new state of awareness and new pattern of thinking.” Moreover, he opinionates (2001: 5-6) that “Wonder usually occurs not the first time we experience something, but the first time we really see what we looked at a thousand times but have never stopped to notice before.” In other words, wonder is there all the time ready to be discovered when we are ready for it.

On the next page he seals his idea when he adds: “It is more to do with our attitude and orientation to things rather than the degree of our knowledge or ignorance…It’s the sort of thing one can gain, lose, regain, nurture, and cultivate.” In other words, wonder is a negotiable fact just like anything else we encounter. After asking if religious belief is rational and how knowledge is different from belief, without giving any answers, the professor agrees that inquiry may help fundamental ideas because (2001:15) “Philosophy occurs where radical wonder is still alive.” Nothing notable about the nature of wonder follows.

When we look to ancient philosophers, there is more available to read about the subject of wonder. Plato in his Phaedo (Plato, 1955:179) elaborated on his belief that any human soul had a prior existence, therefore most ideas and emotions “existed before we were born.” Very close to describing the excitement of wonder, he continued: “There is an absolute beauty, and goodness, and an absolute essence of all things; and if to this, which is now discovered to have existed in our former state, we refer all our sensations, and with this compare them, finding these ideas to be pre-existent and our inborn possession.” Implicitly questioning the metaphysical aspect of existence, he wrote: “There are two sorts of existences—one seen, the other unseen,” as well as “part of us body, another part soul?”

Aristotle considered metaphysics a “first philosophy” and “the knowledge of immortal being” at “the highest degree of abstraction.” He was aware of the importance of wonder, and he wrote in his Metaphysica (1941:Book 1:692), “For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize.” He lavishly reviewed how humans advanced their thinking from wondering about their immediate vital necessities to “the greater matters” such as “the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun, and about the stars and about the genesis of the universe.”

Other philosophers were aware that human brain processed information, including wonder, through many channels. They appear to have placed wonder with high regard between the real and the abstract world. It was a subject that continued to absorb the thinkers of the dark Middle Ages. Spinoza brought a light to the related subject of perception: “The images of things are more easily connected with those images which are related to things which we clearly and distinctly understand than with any others.” [Spinoza, Ethic (1961)] In other words, our knowledge is limited to what we understand and has little access beyond our previous experience.

A fast forward to Hegel leads us to his concept that “in general, no Matter without Form and no Form without mater [exists]. Matter and form give rise to each other reciprocally.” [Hegel, Essence (1964:112)] Applied to wonder, this supports my belief that we see wonder in different forms, but we make little effort to see the matter of it. To evaluate the entire matter, metaphysical knowledge is needed.

What wasn’t considered by these thinkers is how much hidden matter is in the phenomenon of wonder. When wonder is regarded more like a beautiful dream, the truth is not included as one of its main features. There is a tendency to fantasize about wonder and describe it in most unrealistic ways, just to reinforce its already overwhelming display. Suddenly wonder becomes almost unreal—so incredibly beautiful that it is like a fairytale come true. We face a paradox here—wonder as here-and-now reality and wonder as am-I-imaging-this? This shows how greatly needed is the acknowledgement of spirituality as an integral element in the matter of wonder in order to convey its rightful meaning and perception.

 To this day the connection between the scientific and subjective knowledge of wonder is unclear. When we see and feel that “wow!” moment, only a fragment of what is beyond it can be explained. What we miss is its metaphysical essence, or the matter of wonder, that escapes us despite its fundamental importance. Metaphysically speaking, wonder is intended to reveal a truth that humans neglect to identify.  

I have confidence in affirming that we are born with a genetic propensity for wonder.