This paper explores the connection between wonder and meaning, in particular ‘the meaning of life’, a connection that, despite strong intrinsic connections between wonder and the (philosoph...

This paper aims to offer conceptual clarification on the use of the concept of human flourishing with regard to children. We will argue that the concept can meaningfully be applied to parts of human lives, specifically one's childhood, and discuss when we can meaningfully speak of a flourishing child. Viewing children's lives in terms of whether they are flourishing may be able to help us understand and articulate in which ways a child's life may go better or worse. This is (...) relevant, firstly, to the overall evaluation of people's lives, and secondly, because a flourishing childhood could be instrumentally necessary for adult flourishing. But, most importantly, childhood is a period of life that is good in itself irrespective of its contribution to adult flourishing, that is, being able to be a child has intrinsic goodness. Children have particular characteristics that can optimally function in childhood. While these contribute to the overall evaluation of a flourishing life, they are not regarded as valuable only because of this contribution. (shrink)

Various authors see human flourishing as the overarching aim to which education should contribute. We ask whether fostering _wonder_ can help education attain this aim. We discuss two possibilities: firstly, it may be that having a sense of wonder as adults (possibly fostered by and/or refined due to education) contributes to flourishing itself. Secondly, it may be that fostering wonder in education increases the likelihood that education promotes flourishing, which it might do simply by increasing children’s intrinsic interest in what (...) they learn. We argue that there are many plausible connections between wonder and human flourishing (relating to its epistemic and aesthetic dimensions, among others), and that we have reason to believe that early experiences can influence adults’ capacity for wonder. Furthermore, wonder increases the likelihood that education ‘succeeds’; and it supports people’s ability to live well by heightening their appreciation for the world, helping to uncover baseless beliefs, and increasing their awareness of possible goods. In sum, while having a sense of wonder may not be a constitutive element of human flourishing, it is hard to imagine education for human flourishing that is not also wonder-full education. (shrink)

Education as a deliberate activity and purposive process necessarily involves mediation, in the sense that the educator mediates between the child and the world. This can take different forms: the educator may function as a guide who initiates children into particular practices and domains and their modes of thinking and perceiving; or act as a filter, selecting what of the world the child encounters and how; or meet the child as representative of the adult world. I look at these types (...) of mediation at the hand of the work of John Dewey, Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt, and Richard Peters. The purpose of this paper is to explore the bearing that the mediating role of the educator—as interpreted by these authors—has on the role wonder may play in the educational process. I suggest that initiation highlights the familiarizing function of wonder, and is most readily associated with inquisitive wonder; representation draws attention to the defamiliarizing role of wonder, as well as to its world-affirming role; and selection foregrounds the distinction between momentary and dispositional wonder. (shrink)

Curiosity is not prominent in investigations on democratic development. Nor is curiosity discussed in democratic education discourses. However, this article contributes to the present Special Issue the idea that the connection of curiosity and democracy should not be ignored. First, I show that curiosity’s connection with democracy has, regrettably, been largely bypassed in fields related to democratic theory and pedagogy. Then, I elaborate on how the emerging scholarship on curiosity’s intricacies makes it easier to perceive how fruitful the study of (...) curiosity’s role in democratic theory and education would be. In light of this recent rethinking of curiosity, I claim that studying a complex and ambiguous notion of curiosity (along with an equally complex and ambiguous epistemic restraint) is important for studying and advancing democracy and for enriching democratic citizenship education. (shrink)

Curiosity is a wonder of the human mind. It goes to the heart of modernity, as a driving force for learning, novel insights, and innovation, both for individuals and communities. In societies dependent on science and development, finding out what promotes or hampers curiosity and wonder in school curricula and science education is accordingly essential. In this conceptual article, I suggest a framework for curiosity-based science education and I explore options for its wellbeing and development during preschool, preadolescence, and adolescence. (...) In preschool, curiosity and wonder are triggered by perceptive beauty rather than by facts, and a method emphasizing maximism as a complementary factor in preschool science education is proposed. In prepuberty, curiosity is encouraged by exploring the diversity of the world. Facts and clear-cut knowledge constitute a firm foundation for scientific thinking. In high school, curiosity is ignited by means of a better balance between models and phenomenology. Criticism has arisen over the one-sided use of models in high school science education, which limits scientific thinking to frameworks defined by the actual model. Possible solutions to maintain students’ curiosity and ideas to improve the balance between phenomenology and models are discussed. (shrink)

This paper outlines the rationale underpinning the conception of science education as sociopolitical action, and then presents a critique of such a conception from the perspective of liberal education. More specifically, the paper discusses the importance of the conception of science education as sociopolitical action and then raises questions about the content of school science, about the place and value of scientific inquiry, and about the opportunities students have for self-directed inquiry. The central idea behind the critique is that a (...) conception of science education as sociopolitical action downplays the importance of knowledge for its own sake and totally neglects the personal/aesthetic dimension of science. (shrink)

In terms of intervening in embodied experience, medical treatment is wonder-full in its ambition and its metaphysical presumption; yet, wonder’s role in clinical medicine has received little philosophical attention. In this paper, I propose, to doctors and others in routine clinical life, the value of an openness to wonder and to the sense of wonder. Key to this is the identity of the central ethical challenges facing most clinicians, which is not the high-tech drama of the popular conceptions of medical (...) ethics but, rather, the routine of patients’ undramatic but unremitting demands for the clinician’s time and respectful attention. Wonder (conceived as an intense and transfiguring attentiveness) is a ubiquitous ethical source, an alternative to the more familiar respect for rational autonomy, a source of renewal galvanizing diagnostic imagination, and a timely recalling of the embodied agency of both patient and clinician. (shrink)

Is it possible to distinguish, as sociologist Arthur Frank proposes, an ‘ideal of wonder’ within which ill persons could recover some of their former sense of life and flourishing, even within the constraints of ill-health? Beyond this, are there more general benefits in terms of health and well-being that could accrue from cultivating an openness to wonder? In this paper I will first outline and defend a notion of wonder that gives philosophical support to Frank’s proposal, noting why thinking about (...) medical treatment may readily provoke a sense of wonder. Second I will however limit the normative force of such an ‘ideal of wonder’ noting its demands and some of the challenges facing it. The paper goes on, third, to conjecture wider benefits within and beyond the clinical encounter arising from being mindful of the wonder of embodied human agency. Fourth the paper will consider alignments between the foregoing analysis and some theoretical commitments in recent work in health geography. Finally I will briefly reconsider the notion of the body-as-territory, and the role of the imagination in bringing it under wonder’s gaze. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt has a particular notion of thinking that both is and is not philosophical. While not guided by the search for meta principles, nor concerned with establishing logical systems, her notion of thinking as the examination of “whatever happens to come to pass,” and its significance for saving our world from thoughtlessness, retains and is motivated by the fundamental pathos at the heart of philosophy—wonder. In this paper, I consider the limiting and enabling sense in which Arendt invokes “wonder” (...) for the possibility of thinking. I do so, in turn, to explore what the pathos of wonderment might offer education—an institution charged with cultivating “thinking” and, yet, constantly susceptible to the thoughtless trappings of technocratic jargon and the mechanical logic of assessment, learning processes and social reproduction. Can wonder—the very pathos of philosophy—cultivate a thinking that helps us retain an “unclouded attentiveness” to what is educational in education? Might wonder help us to overcome the thoughtlessness that dulls our attention to what we do to each other through education? (shrink)

This paper focuses on the importance of wonder in human flourishing and is orientated towards the dynamics between the two, but with an emphasis on how the former is important for illuminating the latter. It begins with a preliminary sketch of both wonder and human flourishing and subsequently moves on to highlight three aspects of human flourishing: 1) ‘Individuality’, 2) ‘Relations’ and 3) ‘The political’, and why these play to wonderment.

This thesis examines the impact of a new wonder that emerged through Iranians' travelling and observing educational progressions of advanced countries during the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. In order to analyze the wonder that affected Iran's modern philosophy of education, the study first discusses the predominant themes within Iran's educational philosophy from pre-Islamic times to Qajar's traditional elementary schools. The second part of the study focuses on examining the element of wonder in philosophy and its evolving form in cultures (...) and societies. Subsequently, the new wonder and the early signs of a modern philosophy of education for Iran are examined in the last part of the study. (shrink)