Conference Review
A Sense of Wonder: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives
4-5 June 2008
Summary Abstract
The experience of wonder plays a kaleidoscopic role across a variety of different human practices, ranging from art to philosophy, and from science to religion. This conference brought together a number of people working in these different areas to explore a variety of perspectives on the place and importance of wonder in each domain. Guiding the inquiry were questions about the nature of wonder and its objects, about the value we attach to it, and about the means by which it is cultivated in those practices which value it as part of the emotional and intellectual discipline they pursue.
Event Report
The aim of this conference was to bring together a number of people working in several different domains – from art to philosophy, and from science to religion – in order to consider the variety of roles which wonderment plays in each of them. In organising this conference, the guidelines I had used to orient discussion had focused on three main spheres of questioning. One concerned the nature or objects of wonder, and here the main contrast was between wonder at the ordinary or familiar and wonder at the extraordinary or new. Another set of questions concerned the reasons why we value, if indeed we do, the capacity to wonder. And another set of questions branched off from the idea that this capacity – and especially the wonder directed towards the ordinary – is an acquired one, and hence there is a space for considering the means or techniques employed in each practice or domain for arousing and disciplining a sense of wonder.
Speakers differed in the degree to which they engaged with these starting questions, though all papers illuminated them from different directions. On the first day, Marcel van Ackeren discussed the Stoic view of wonder and ascribed to the Stoics a critique of wonder on the basis of their physics and their view of emotions. Derek Matravers considered the relationship of affective and cognitive components in wonder in the larger context of a question about the value of wonder. Emmanuel Halais discussed the mystical viewpoint in Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein and the links between them. Mary-Jane Rubenstein talked about the relationship between Heidegger’s notorious political myopia and his notion of wonder, arguing that the orientation around the ordinary found in the latter comports ill with the former. David Burrell considered the notion of religious wonder emerging in the diaries of Etty Hillesum, situating himself in Charles Taylor’s narrative of secularism and more specifically his discussion of experiences of conversion. The second day started with a paper by Claude-Olivier Doron, who argued a description of the use of the microscope in 18th-century science as a practice of wonder. Michel Hulin, speaking after him, talked about the notion of wonder in Indian aesthetics – with a special focus on dramatic performances – describing it as one of the most fundamental aspects of aesthetic experience. He was followed by Douglas Hedley, who discussed wonder in the context of a question about the relationship between the sublime and the sacred. The conference closed with an overview of the papers and a discussion of some of the main themes, led by Sophia Vasalou.
We are hoping to produce a collective volume, which will include most papers presented at the conference as well as papers promised by others who were unable to attend.
