Not losing the ability to wonder, but losing the courage to question

By Albert Knox stating that "It seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world.” I believe he means as we get older we no longer are surprised by the world so therefore no longer question it. We fall into our daily routine and accept what we once found amazing and curious’ as regular parts of everyday life. We are so accustomed to our repetitive existence that we do not find everyday occurrences a basis for philosophical questioning. This is what I believe Albert Knox was implying when he stated this.

I partially agree with the statement made by Albert Knox. This is because I do agree that as we grow up we aren’t as easily astonished, but we don’t lose the ability to wonder about the world. What we lose is the ability to question the world. We still wonder about it but do not verbalize it. This is for a variety of reasons. First, that we know there is no straight forward answer. As humans, we like a concise, clear answer. Not having one not only confuses us and makes us realize the limit of our knowledge, but also scares us. We realize we cannot control our future, and that the greater things are out of our hands. This lack of control scares humans so much that we prefer to engage ourselves in trivial things, not wonder about the world. By asking a philosophical question, we may hear the answer we don’t want to hear. By not asking, we can pretend to be oblivious and therefore don’t need to acknowledge the problem at sight - because ignorance is bliss.

Secondly, as emphasized on p68 by the story of the emperor’s new clothes, we see that children are not afraid and have the courage to ask questions and admit their lack of knowledge. Adults, however, haven’t lost the ability to wonder but have lost the courage to ask. They may be labelled and judged if they think differently. They have come to learn not to question what people now understand to be ‘common knowledge’. Derived from this is the link to admitting you “know nothing” (p67). To keep up in this fast-paced world you must put on a face and act as if you know everything in order to be respected. By contradicting this lie, you run the risk of being judged as ‘ill-educated’ and therefore losing the respect of your peers.

Last but not least, our schooling tends to stifle our creative thinking. Both religion and science both have perfectly acceptable answers to many of the wonders of the world. With two such contradictory answers to the same question, one does not know where to go. We tend not to look for answers in other branches of knowledge as we already have two satisfactory answers why go out of our way to find more answers that will just then further confuse us? In my personal experience, such examples include our studying the origin of life. On the one hand we have the Big Bang theory as a result of science, but opposing this is our learning from religious studies that God created the universe. With two so seemingly opposite answers, we feel overcome with this question we many never truly be able to solve, so we prefer not to chase it.

To sum up, I believe this faculty of wonder is still embedded within us, but for a variety of reasons, as we grow up, we don’t exercise it. We prefer to leave it that life is a mystery, than embark on the quest to answer questions that may never have answers.