Assignment 1 - Chloe Chan

Albert Knox indicates that a good philosopher will always question everything and have the “faculty of wonder”. However most adults loose this ability as they drift into a world they take “for granted” and are more concerned with their social life. Knox points out that as we get tied up the world would eventually “no longer astonish” us and will turn into “a habit”, consequently keeping our minds flat. Knox explains that when we are little we are puzzled by the new world and will explore it with “enthusiasm”. But as we grow older the world slowly become less “bewildering” and we begin to classify things as being common and normal, and gradually, becoming used to our surroundings, we loose the ability of questioning.

It is obvious that Knox himself is a philosopher and does not fancy the “apathetic and the indifferent” life, he clearly loves to question and ponder, therefore his theory may be a bit exaggerated. He is right when he says that we are not as easily impressed as we grow older, however, there are people that remain enthusiastic about everything; it is just a matter of personality. Knox is also correct that if we saw someone fly we would not accept it. But Knox says that “it all has to do with habit”, and didn’t consider the reason that we have the knowledge of science, which tells us that it would be impossible for someone to fly.

There are billions of people in the world, each person has their own individual personality, the world itself is huge and we all have our own culture and environment that we grow in, we also belong to many groups such as religion, social groups, sport interests etc. Basically there is a wide range of people and the extent to which we question things may depend on these things. I think that we all have the ability to “wonder” but it is just a matter of do we need it, how important is it and do we like to do it. Some people may have a career which depends on questioning theories therefore will question more often, some people may have a job which depends on their social life therefore will not need to question as much and will push it into the “background”, others may just question naturally. Therefore I think Knox was only partially right.