It might seem strange that people remark upon the ‘wonder’ of the natural world, whilst also excitedly claiming that science ‘reveals’ or ‘explains’ that world. On the one hand, curiosity drives us to investigate the world, and ourselves, whilst those inquiries also ‘lay bare’ their secrets, ‘passing by the outer courts of nature, into her inner chambers’, as Francis Bacon put it. But surely there is a sense, then, in which science – and any intellectual inquiry – dissolves mystery and dispels wonder?
Aristotle once remarked that 'it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophise'. But isn’t wonder gradually converted into understanding and familiarity? There is a sense of wonder at the diversity and curiosity of the natural world throughout ancient natural histories, such as Aelian’s On the Nature of Animals, Solinus’ On the Wonders of the World, and even through to early scientific texts such as Newton’s Principia, which marvels at the ‘Order and Beauty’ of Nature.
One still reads constant protestations on the parts of contemporary scientists to a sense of ‘wonder’ at the complexities of the biological and physical diversity of the world; especially in cosmology and genetics. However, there is arguably a sense in which ‘wonder’ and ‘investigation’ and explanation’ make poor bedfellows. It may sound like intellectual fatigue or hollow mysticism to insist that ‘there are some things that ought to remain a mystery’. But there is surely a sense in which a world in which all the ‘inner courts’ of nature were opened up would be undesirable – such a world would harbour no mystery, no sense of the unknown. According to Aristotle, in such a world, there would no wonder to motivate our inquiries, no inspiration for our investigations.
But perhaps the attempted distinction between ‘wonder’ and ‘understanding’ is misplaced. Many would argue that our inquiries into nature simply confirm and, indeed, accentuate our sense of wonder. As Einstein once remarked, ‘the sense of “wonder”’ at the natural world ‘increases ever more with the development of our knowledge’. Perhaps, then, the initial worry that the advance of our knowledge would expel mystery and the ‘sense of wonder’ rests on a sense of intellectual hubris, or an overestimation of the extent of our scientific ambitions. Humility and wonder may be inherent features of our relationship with Nature; and that may be a very reassuring fact indeed.
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