by CELSO VIEIRA
This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? Learn about the series and click here to add your voice to the conversation.
Wonder: that is the starting point of philosophy, according to Plato. Myths capture our attention by telling wonderful stories. Philosophers, however, look for hidden wonders disguised in platitudes. Can you tell what the verb ‘to be’ really means every time we use it? Of course, there also is room for the wonderful stories in philosophy. Humans are storytellers, after all. The orphic tradition portrays the search for knowledge as a descent into the depths of the underworld. They might even have influenced Plato when he writes that doing philosophy is learning how to die. Whether we are attracted by the wonderful or the disguised wonders, for Aristotle all intellectual endeavors share the same origin: our natural desire for understanding. [Read more…] about Wonder, depth, understanding: Scholarship in process