Mason's Meditations

If you're looking for something to chew over, some thoughtful seeds for mental cultivation, bookmark this page for Jeff Mason's monthly meditations. To think in or take away...

Number Twenty: Wonder

Philosophy is born in wonder, but it is no wonder that many of us rarely even get to the beginning of philosophy. Why is this? Everyone knows that the universe is full of wonders. If you could see a clear, dark night’s sky, the stars would still be burning in their majesty, indifferent to human fate. Their light comes from unimaginable distances. Time distorts. We look into the past. What could be more wonderful than that? Or take a beautiful sunset? There is no reason for that kind of beauty to exist, yet it does, and it is a wonder that it does. From the largest perspective, it is a wonder that the earth exists at all in the supportive semi-permanent balance in which we find it, that life exists, that consciousness exists. From the smallest perspective, there is as much wonder in the small machines of nature and art as in the whole of the universe.

This wonder is the gateway to philosophy, because it takes us out of ourselves, out of our immediate lives and into a world of thought and speculation, reason and argument, dialogue and dialectic. Out of this wonder comes the "what" and the "how" and the "why" questions that have been the suff of philosophy through the centuries.

Wonder is lost in the routines of life, and the automatic habits that structure behavior, the expectations that guide our senses, make us look for what we expect to find. We become so focused on a cluster of interests, that the larger and smaller worlds no longer make an impression. Stop for an instant and look around. There are wonders everywhere, things whose explanations do not explain. That is when philosophy is needed, and so that is when is it born.

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Mason's Meditations will next be updated late-April 2002

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Previous Meditations

19. Dualism (20 February 2002)
18. Time and Immortality (15 January 2002)
17. Perennial Philosophy (15 November 2001)
16. Pain and Grief (15th October 2001)
15. Paradise Now (15th September 2001)
14. The Life of Pleasure (1st August 2001)
13. The Most Terrible Thing (1st July 2001)
12. Assisted Suicide (1st June 2001)
11. Death (1st May 2001)
10. Pessimism and Optimism (1st April 2001)
9. Leisure (16th March 2001)
8. The Reflective Life (1st March 2001)
7. On Having an Open Mind (15th February 2001)
6. The Art of Conversation (1st February 2001)
5. Having, Doing, Being (15th January 2001)
4. The Good of Things (1st January 2001)
3. Is Happiness Overrated? (15th December 2000)
2. The Fiction of Forevermore (1st December 2000)
1. The Art of Living (15th November 2000)