"It seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world." Yes I agree insofar as there is an explanation to the wonders of the world. The Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines ‘to wonder’ as ‘to ask yourself questions or express a desire to know about something’. So my interpretation of what Albert Knox seems to see ‘as…the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world." to me would be that as we grow old, and therefore ironically stay in this world longer as I shall explain later, the desire to acquire knowledge that answers life’s questions like ‘is there a God?’ gradually disappears, withering away until we slowly become a person like Sophie’s mum. However, what Knox saw was not entirely true as we learn in Chapter 11 that Aristotle believed one of the three forms of happiness, which must be achieved with the other two simultaneously ‘for man to find happiness fulfillment’, is ‘a life as a thinker and philosopher’. This view again can be refuted when you see people like Richard Branson who are happy but have achieved only ‘pleasure and enjoyment’ and being a ‘free and responsible citizen’. Additionally, another rebuttal is that it is true that we gain happiness when the questions about life you think about have tangible answers. As we age and thus stay longer in this world, logically, one would think it is likely that most if not everyone will have answers to the ‘major problems that needed to be solved’. However this is not the case as I will set to explain it.
To me personally, the answers to some wonders when I was child, such as ‘How did that heater work?’, could easily and straightforwardly be answered objectively by science and then I was done with it. I felt satisfied and happy with it.
But there are still some questions that cannot be answered. I remembers I asked lots of questions in astronomy when I was a child. For example, I asked if that was the Orion constellation in the sky and I simply received an ‘I don’t know’. Eventually, I lost interest.
Similarly, when I graduated from primary school, I began to read about war and crimes and asked why some people are so evil. I am sure anyone can give me a truckload of answers from the sociological, psychological, biological perspective or a combination of all the above. Ultimately, it all boils down to one question—are people born good or bad? There is no answer so I lost my inquisitive mind in futility while searching for the answer. I just accepted life as it is. Moreover, pressing issues turned up such as school assignments, GCSEs and now IB. There was no time to have the ‘faculty to wonder’ when these wonders carried no answers.
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2 comments:
Its really true that we loose interest in things that can't be answered and that what we do in daily life covers our chance to question things freely. Knox was right to say that we dont wonder as much as when we were young but hes wrong when he says we loose the ability to wonder
True, some people may or may not wonder less about the world now then when they were young but have you considered another thing. People may or may not lose their ability to wonder. This could be analogous to forgetting in psychology. We might actually lose the ability and have to recover it or it might be unavailable but free to use if we are given some hints.
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