Wonder

Thauma (θαῦμα) is wonder, astonishment, the marvel that seizes us before something strange or admirable; the verb thaumazein is 'to wonder', 'to be amazed'. The Greeks made it the very origin of philosophy.

The beginning of philosophy

'It is through wonder', says Aristotle in the Metaphysics, 'that people now begin and originally began to philosophize' — first puzzling over the things at hand, then over greater matters, the moon and the sun and the coming-to-be of the cosmos. Plato says the same in the Theaetetus: wonder is the only beginning of philosophy, and the philosopher is the child of Iris, messenger of the gods — for wonder is the messenger that summons the mind to inquiry.

From wonder to knowledge

Wonder is the emotional spring of the love of wisdom: to feel that something is remarkable and not yet understood is already to be drawn toward understanding it. Yet it is meant to be a beginning, not an end — the perplexity that sets inquiry in motion, to be carried forward by questioning and dialectic toward knowledge. To lose the capacity for wonder is to lose the impulse to philosophize at all.