Showing papers on "Wonder published in 2017"

Phenomenology in Its Original Sense

Abstract: In this article, I try to think through the question, "What distinguishes phenomenology in its original sense?" My intent is to focus on the project and methodology of phenomenology in a manner that is not overly technical and that may help others to further elaborate on or question the singular features that make phenomenology into a unique qualitative form of inquiry. I pay special attention to the notion of "lived" in the phenomenological term "lived experience" to demonstrate its critical role and significance for understanding phenomenological reflection, meaning, analysis, and insights. I also attend to the kind of experiential material that is needed to focus on a genuine phenomenological question that should guide any specific research project. Heidegger, van den Berg, and Marion provide some poignant exemplars of the use of narrative "examples" in phenomenological explorations of the phenomena of "boredom," "conversation," and "the meaningful look in eye-contact." Only what is given or what gives itself in lived experience (or conscious awareness) are proper phenomenological "data" or "givens," but these givens are not to be confused with data material that can be coded, sorted, abstracted, and accordingly analyzed in some "systematic" manner. The latter approach to experiential research may be appropriate and worthwhile for various types of qualitative inquiry but not for phenomenology in its original sense. Finally, I use the mythical figure of Kairos to show that the famous phenomenological couplet of the epoche-reduction aims for phenomenological insights that require experiential analysis and attentive (but serendipitous) methodical inquiry practices.

Working at the wonder: Collaborative writing as method of inquiry

Abstract: This article offers a discussion concerning the future of collaborative writing as a method of inquiry. Taking the form of a dialogic exchange, we take up Isabelle Stengers’ notion of “wonder” as a creative and political lens through which to consider the disruptive, radical, and productive methodological capacity that collaborative writing as a research method potentially offers. Working particularly with Deleuze and Guattari, we argue that language in collaborative writing practices is deeply entangled with complex materialist practice, and through engagements with these “matterings” we make sense of collaborative writing as immanent event. We discuss—and experience—the challenges that collaborative writing has for research and this article pushes at established categories, works against the fixities of conventional theory construction, contests the humanist and phenomenological proclivities that arguably limit the process and effectiveness of collaborative writing as method of inquiry, and wonders at t...

Cutting culture at the joints

Abstract: In his thought-provoking reflections on the evolution of religion, Kim Sterelny notes that “religions … are so variable from culture to culture that one might reasonably wonder whether there really...

Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment

Abstract: Contents: Preface Introduction, Alexander Marr 'Out of the frying pan...': curiosity, danger, and the poetics of witness in the Renaissance traveller's tale, Wes Williams The metaphorical collecting of curiosities in early modern France and Germany, Neil Kenny The New World collections of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici and their role in the creation of a Kunst- and Wunderkammer in the Palazzo Vecchio, Adriana Turpin The jocund cabinet and the melancholy museum in 17th-century English literature, Claire Preston Curious knowledge and wonder-working wisdom in the Occult Works of Heinrich Khunrath, Peter Forshaw Enthusiasm and 'damnable curiosity': Meric Casaubon and John Dee, Stephen Clucas Gentille curiosite: wonder-working and the culture of automata in the late Renaissance, Alexander Marr Nosce teipsum: curiosity, the humoural body, and the culture of therapeutics in late 16th- and early 17th-century England, Deborah Harkness Back from wonderland: Jean Antoine Nollet's Italian tour (1749), Paola Bertucci Curiosity and the lusus naturae: the case of 'Proteus' Hill, George Rousseau Epilogue, George Rousseau Index.

The Educational Importance of Deep Wonder.

Abstract: That wonder is educationally important will strike many people as obvious. And in a way it is obvious, because being capable of experiencing wonder implies an openness to (novel) experience and seems naturally allied to intrinsic educational motivation, an eagerness to inquire, a desire to understand, and also to a willingness to suspend judgement and bracket existing—potentially limiting—ways of thinking, seeing, and categorising. Yet wonder is not a single thing, and it is important to distinguish at least two kinds of wonder: active wonder(ing), which entails a drive to explore, to find out, to explain; and deep or contemplative wonder, which is not inherently inquisitive like active wonder and, as a response to mystery, may leave us lost for words. Claims for wonder's importance to education and science often do not distinguish between the two, but whereas for active wonder that importance seems obvious, this is much less so for deep wonder, which by its very nature rather seems to be anti-educational. Yet in this paper I explore exactly the educational importance of deep wonder. This importance is found to lie, not just in its motivational effects—real though they are—but in making us attend to the world for its own sake, and making us aware of the limits of our understanding.

Defining Travel: On the Travel Book, Travel Writing and Terminology

Abstract: From the amount of critical attention and the number of labels applied to travel writing in recent years, one may well wonder whether critics are discussing the same object. The problematic status both of travel writing and of the terms used to describe it becomes obvious as soon as one tries to define the object. One must ask if Heart of Darkness, or Moby Dick, or any other number of such works, can be described as travel books or travelogues. Conrad's travels are at the origin of his novella, but one would be hard-pushed to affirm that a referential pact characterizes Heart of Darkness in a predominant way. Contemporary author, Jonathan Raban, has defined travel writing thus: As a literary form, travel writing is a notoriously raffish open house where different genres are likely to end up in the same bed.

Music is awesome: Influences of emotion, personality, and preference on experienced awe

Abstract: Awe is a complex, cognitive–conceptual emotion associated with transcendence and wonder. Music has the power to create this kind of transcendence. Can music evoke awe? Previous research demonstrates that awe is associated with individual differences in personality such as openness. This study examined whether different kinds of music across a wide variety of genres can evoke awe and whether the experience of awe depends on individual differences. The study further investigated the relationship of awe to patterns of emotional responses to different dimensions of musical genre. Study 1 demonstrated that high need for cognition and low cognitive closure predicted awe for reflective and complex music, that felt happiness predicted awe for all kinds of music, and that perceived happiness and sadness predicted awe only for reflective and complex music. Study 2 replicated the finding that perceived sadness can evoke awe in reflective and complex music and further demonstrated that experienced musical awe correlates with individual differences in the tendency to experience awe more generally. These results are of interest to advertisers interested in evoking awe with music and marketers interested in segmenting to target the appropriate populations for this purpose.

Wonder as a tool to engage preservice elementary teachers in science learning and teaching

Abstract: This exploratory project considers the use of wonder as a pedagogical tool with preservice elementary teachers (PSETs). An ongoing vexation facing science teacher educators is helping future elementary teachers overcome anxiety and negative associations with science due to their own school science experiences, while simultaneously encouraging innovative and ambitious teaching practice. Utilizing wonder as a pedagogical tool for emotional and aesthetic engagement with science holds promise as an entry point to connect future teachers with meaningful science content and practice. The link between wonder and science is well-articulated by successful scientists throughout history, and yet is rarely employed explicitly within elementary or teacher education science learning contexts. Forging a pedagogy of wonder demands connection to the emotive embodiment of science as a uniquely human process that nurtures our intense need to know. This qualitative case study is an effort to better understand if utilizing pedagogy intentionally focused on wonder could impact PSETs’ perceptions of science and scientific thinking. This paper describes the key findings that emerged while utilizing pedagogy steeped in wonder with PSETs, and the degree to which engaging with wonder impacted their perceptions of science and their future science teaching. This research supports the critical role that wonder could play in changing PSETs’ relationship with science and assisting them in the development of the pedagogical courage necessary to envision possibilities beyond their past experiences.

A Particular Kind of Wonder: The Experience of Magic Past and Present.

Abstract: Wonder may be an important emotion, but the term wonder is remarkably ambiguous. For centuries, in psychological discourse, it has been defined as a variety of things. In an attempt to be more focu...

When do past events require explanation? Insights from social psychology

Abstract: Some past events incite more wonder about their causes than do others. For example, negative events require explanation more than positive events. We review social psychologists’ theoretical and em...

The Online Domestic Goddess: An Analysis of Food Blog Femininities

Abstract: Scholars have explored how female food celebrities represent a realm of fantasy and desire, embodying attractive “domestic goddesses” who showcase the wonder and seduction of home-cooked meals. The...

Ecology out of Bounds: Environmental Humanities Scholarship for Multi-Species and Transdisciplinary Contexts

Abstract: This dissertation argues that the critical, political and ethical resources shaping popular and scholarly forms of Anglo-North American environmentalism lack the theoretical and imaginative tools to address the challenges of the Anthropocene (that is, the notion that the human species, enabled by a globally expansive petro-industrial apparatus, has become a dominant geological force). Unsettling notions of progress, agency, nature and the individual in novel ways, the Anthropocene changes the way humanists understand what it means to be human and what environmentalists have understood nature to be. As a result, I argue that the anthropogenic landscapes of the Anthropocene challenge writers, theorists, storytellers, artists, scientists and activists to open different kinds of intellectual and imaginative space. Therefore, drawing on feminist science and technology studies, multi-species anthropology and posthumanism, this dissertation contributes to the emerging field of the Environmental Humanities by contextualizing forms of environmental mediation responsive to Anthropocene environments. Making a mess of strict disciplinary and species divisions, my work addresses the way that different kinds of knowledge practice show up in and make a difference in the way bodies and multi-species assemblages materialize and function. Moreover, I distinguish my contribution to environmental thought by avoiding knowledge practices predicated on into the wild narratives and return to nature tropes. Problematically, these kinds of narratives are at risk of advocating masculine imaginaries of control and conquest, and moral superiority complexes about self-sufficiency that delimit boundaries between the natural and the unnatural, the pure from artificial, and thus close off knowledge making work from play, experimentation, wonder and curiosity. More than a question of accurately representing what the Anthropocene is or is not, my research amounts to a pragmatic challenge about how to craft theoretical and textual practices that foster anthropo(de)centric, multi-species and transdisciplinary media, publics and futures.

Among Wolves: Ethnography and the Immersive Study of Power

Abstract: Summoned by an anonymous Prosecutor, ten contemporary ethnographers gather in an aging barn to hold a trial of Alice Goffman’s controversial ethnography, On the Run. But before the trial can get underway, a one-eyed wolfdog arrives with a mysterious liquid potion capable of rendering the ethnographers invisible in their fieldsites. Presented as a play that unfolds in seven acts, the ensuing drama provides readers with both a practical guide for how to conduct immersive participant-observation research and a sophisticated theoretical engagement with the relationship between ethnography as a research method and the operation of power. By interpolating "how-to" aspects of ethnographic research with deeper questions about ethnography’s relationship to power, this book presents a compelling introduction for those new to ethnography and rich theoretical insights for more seasoned ethnographic practitioners from across the social sciences. Just as ethnography as a research method depends crucially on serendipity, surprise, and an openness to ambiguity, the book’s dramatic and dialogic format encourages novices and experts alike to approach the study of power in ways that resist linear programs and dogmatic prescriptions. The result is a playful yet provocative invitation to rekindle those foundational senses of wonder and generative uncertainty that are all too often excluded from conversations about the methodologies and methods we bring to the study of the social world.

Paleophonic Futures: Charles Cros's Audiovisual Worlds

Abstract: Charles Cros (1842–1888) is known primarily for his poems, "Le Hareng saur" most especially, and is often cited for his scientific work on mechanical sound recording and color photography, among manifold other ventures. He also wrote short fiction, some of which, as this article proposes, contains nuanced critiques of the trajectory new media technologies might follow in the nineteenth century and beyond. Taken together, "Un drame interastral" (1872) and "Le Journal de l'avenir" (1880) evoke attitudes of both wonder and deep skepticism, in both utopian and dystopian settings, about the future uses of audiovisual technologies, namely the phonograph, the telephone, and the photophone. This article demonstrates how the two texts envision potentially dangerous entanglements between political centralization and these new media technologies.

The Reasonableness of Wonder

Abstract: Nussbaum’s politics of wonder focuses on non-human animals. However, the sense of wonder within it also applies to human beings. Can wonder in Nussbaum’s sense be helpful when articulating justice between people on politically liberal grounds? I argue that it can because it helps us consider our specific form of striving, that is, human freedom, in comparison and contrast with other kinds of living striving. Thereby it keeps in view striving as such. To make my case, I show how wonder in Nussbaum’s sense is helpful for Rawls’s core legitimation scenes of democratic fairness, the original position, and public reasoning. Furthermore, wonder is not objectionable in these scenes, since it brings into view the considerability of life, such that life should not be used without a good enough reason, on the basis of which any socialized conception of how to live well ought to proceed. Thus an environmental sensibility has a useful place within mainstream liberal justice.

Content Matters: Why Nurturing Creativity Is So Different in Different Domains

Abstract: Creativity brings joy, wonder, efficiency, excitement, and pleasure into our lives. Although creativity can also be malevolent (see, e.g., Cropley et al., Creat Res J 20(2):105–115, 2008), for the most part creativity makes life better, and most of us would like to have and to experience more of it. Nurturing creativity is therefore something that many of us would like to do. We’d like to help our students, our colleagues, our employees (or employers), and of course ourselves be more creative.

Reflection in constellation: Post theories, subjectivity, and teacher preparation

Abstract: Reflection is, no doubt, useful for shifting thinking, knowing, and doing. Indeed, many have felt its benefits. In this article, we wonder how reconceptualizing reflection with poststructural theor...

“Such Monsters Do Exist in Nature”: Mermaids, Tritons, and the Science of Wonder in Eighteenth-Century Europe

Abstract: While a thick vein of scepticism marked Enlightenment thinkers’ studies, such investigations cannot be divorced from their concurrent quest to merge the wondrous and the rational. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in philosophers’ investigations of merpeople. Examining European gentlemen’s debates over mermaids and tritons illuminate their willingness to embrace wonder in their larger quest to understand the origins of humankind. Naturalists utilized a wide range of methodologies to critically study these seemingly wondrous creatures and, in turn, assert the reality of merpeople as evidence of humanity’s aquatic roots. As with other creatures they encountered in their global travels, European philosophers utilized various theories—including those of racial, biological, taxonomical, and geographic difference—to understand merpeople’s place in the natural world. By the second half of the eighteenth century, certain thinkers integrated merpeople into their explanation of humanity’s origins, thus bringing this phenomenon full circle.

Wonder Woman’s symbolic death: on kinship and the politics of origins

Abstract: This paper examines the wholesale rewriting of Wonder Woman’s origin story in a run written by Brian Azzarello that started in 2011 and finished in 2014. The new origin story made Diana the daughter of Zeus and did away with her matriarchal birth and lineage that was the cornerstone of the character. The paper argues that Wonder Woman was an explicitly feminist intervention from the beginning and that this piece of retroactive continuity completely undermines the political possibilities of Wonder Woman as a character. It also considers this move in light of the current context in superhero comics in which great advances have been made in the representation of gender and in the employment of women writers and artists. The paper concludes by arguing there is a tragic inevitability to Wonder Woman’s demise in that anything that truly threatens an alternative to patriarchy must in the end be tamed. Finally, the paper makes use of Greg Rucka’s Hiketeia to illustrate the problem of Wonder Woman represen...

Human Capabilities and Animal Lives: Conflict, Wonder, Law: A Symposium†

Abstract: Human beings share the world with many other living beings, and, in particular, with many other species of animals.1 Sometimes human beings forget that we are also animals, and, in consequence of t...

Sublime Astronomy: The Eidouranion of Adam Walker and His Sons

Abstract: In this essay, Jan Golinski explores the careers of Adam Walker and his sons, who delivered public lectures on astronomy in London and the English provinces from the 1780s to the 1820s. Golinski traces the Walkers’ long-running success in the market for popular scientific lectures to their deployment of the “eidouranion,” or transparent orrery, and makes a suggestion about the design of this theatrical display apparatus. As the centerpiece of the Walkers’ shows, the eidouranion was complemented by a presentation that emphasized the aesthetic appeal of astronomy, especially in terms of the sublime. By conveying the majesty of the cosmos in their lectures, the Walkers elicited quasi-religious feelings of wonder and awe in their audiences. The rhetorical accomplishment secured the eidouranion’s place among the scientific spectacles of the Regency metropolis, and allowed the Walkers to discuss even the potentially controversial topic of the existence of life on other planets.

Being opened : a hermeneutic phenomenological enquiry into the existential psychotherapist's lived experience of wonder

Abstract: This research is the first to explore the lived experience of psychotherapist wonder. The primary aim was to provide a rich, evocative description of wonder together with an understanding of its meaning and the conditions for its emergence as a phenomenon in a clinical context. Eight existential, phenomenologically orientated psychotherapists and counselling psychologists participated in the study. To generate sufficiently rich lived experience descriptions the methodological approach of Max van Manen’s (2014) Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Practice was used. Two methods of data collection were applied with each participant: a written description of a concrete experience of clinical and an unstructured phenomenological interview. Max Van Manen’s thematic approach was the main method of analysing the emergent data. During this analysis, Corinne Glesne’s method of Poetic Transcription was also used in response to the emerging poetic quality of the participants’ experiences. Three interconnected overarching themes were identified. The first theme highlights the experience of wonder as a state of openness in which the therapist dwells in unknowing. The second theme details the embodied, deeply relational dimension of wonder: of therapist opening to and being opened into an experience of full presence with their client. The third theme focuses on how wonder is a profoundly renewing experience: a birthing place for new knowledge and therapeutic discovery. Discussion of these findings suggests their therapeutic and theoretical implications, extending existing literature on practices of wonder. The relevance of Hannah Arendt’s natal ontology is made to the emergent themes of this study, widening the attention of existential psychotherapy beyond the thoroughly theorized topic of anxiety in the fear of death to describe the awakening and hopeful possibilities of wonder-attuned practice. This study provides compelling descriptions of the ethical dimensions of wonder which generate deep mutual connection within the therapeutic relationship resonant of Martin Buber’s I-Thou relating, Emmanuel Levinas’s Alterity of the Other and Luce Irigaray’s Maternal Philosophy of Breath.

Curious Minds Wonder Alike: Studying Multimodal Behavioral Dynamics to Design Social Scaffolding of Curiosity

Abstract: Curiosity is the strong desire to learn or know more about something or someone. Since learning is often a social endeavor, social dynamics in collaborative learning may inevitably influence curiosity. There is a scarcity of research, however, focusing on how curiosity can be evoked in group learning contexts. Inspired by a recently proposed theoretical framework [30] that articulates an integrated socio-cognitive infrastructure of curiosity, in this work, we use data-driven approaches to identify fine-grained social scaffolding of curiosity in child-child interaction, and propose how they can be used to elicit and maintain curiosity in technology-enhanced learning environments. For example, we discovered sequential patterns of multimodal behaviors across group members and we describe those that maximize an individual’s utility, or likelihood, of demonstrating curiosity during open-ended problem-solving in group work. We also discovered, and describe here, behaviors that directly or in a mediated manner cause curiosity related conversational behaviors in the interaction, with twice as many interpersonal causal influences compared to intrapersonal ones. We explain how these findings form a solid foundation for developing curiosity-increasing learning technologies or even assisting a human coach to induce curiosity among learners.

Try the spirits: power encounters and anti-wonder in Christian missions

Abstract: Missionaries who attempted to convert Pacific Islanders to Protestant Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries often engaged in public contests meant to demonstrate the power of Jehov...

Atilio B. Gamerro (1925-1994)

Abstract: Scientists learn more about our world and ourselves every day, and many of these insights are made public through the internet. This should present an opportunity for every individual to be science literate and even engaged in science. However, conflicting headlines and false information create a confusing and suspicious landscape for learning. In this onslaught of information, it is easy to forget what science actually is, and why it is so important to society. My goal is to communicate science differently. Science is not a collection of facts. Science is a process, a continual questioning of what we know and an infinite search for deeper understanding. I focus on the wonder of science and highlight how much we still have to learn.Synesthesia videoMental Illness video

Enchanting automata: Wilkins and the wonder of workmanship

Abstract: Since Aristotle, it has been common to understand wonder as a psychological state characterized by an absence of rational understanding. Drawing on this idea, a number of historians have suggested that the wonder which had long characterized the experience of automata, declined in the early modern period alongside the increased availability of theoretical treatises on mechanics. This article seeks to challenge this view by examining the relationship between rational and practical modes of technical understanding in John Wilkins’ Mathematicall Magick (1648). My aim is to show that a close reading of the second book of the Mathematicall Magick reveals an alternative conception of wonder as an experience of skilled workmanship that both tolerates theoretical understanding and is increased through practical experience. It will be my claim that the conception of technical wonder which emerges from Wilkin’s descriptions of automata, reveals how the concept of Aristotelian wonder is too reductive to capt...