Astonishment. Essays on wonder for Piero Boitani. Ediz. italiana e inglese

Aristotle’s definition of wonder in the Metaphysics points to man’s basic drive for learning and truth, for understanding natural phenomena and their causes. From this perspective Aristotle’s words call attention to the capacity for wonder built in human nature as the necessary passion that inspires the desire to know in man, who is naturally a contemplative being. These ideas are fundamental to understand wonder and its development across the centuries. The essays in this volume follow the ramifications of the idea of wonder in different fields of knowledge, covering the Bible, literature, physics, history and philosophy, from antiquity to the present. The different approaches reveal the complexity of an idea that has had an important place in western thought ever since its beginning.