Getting It

     First, some old business.
     Lat time, I mentioned some books relating to wonder.  Two readers added their own suggestions, one William James's Varieties of Religious Experience.  How such an obvious selection was missed by me has to be taken as an error occasioned by age.  I'm bound to make mistakes, and ask that you indulge me with a possible smirk that  such mistakes are age-related.   (I have no doubt that I'll make a really stupid mistake now and then, in which case I hope you'll  also be forgiving.) Remember, you're not getting any younger!
     A second book is an anthology by Abraham Joshua Heschel, I Asked for Wonder,  which I'll comment upon after reading it.  A third is from my own library: Wonder, by Robert C. Fuller, in which the author grapples with the evolution from "emotion to spirituality," to quote the subtitle.
     In my introduction, I hinted that family-related stories would be few and far between; this is one of those few and far between occasions.
     When he was at university, one of my sons was urged by his math professor to get a PhD in the subject.  I said I didn't remember him as having a special talent in mathematics.  What happened? I asked.  "I don't know," he replied, "I just got it."  And that decades-old comment has become part of my world-view ever since.  (The PhD wasn't appealing; he took an MD instead.)
     The concept of "getting it" is applicable universally.  Some extremely bright persons acknowledge that poetry eludes them.  Others simply don't understand some basic ideas of mathematics or the physical sciences.  An unusually brilliant person I know has admitted that he tried unsuccessfully to understand poetry, art, and photography, ultimately conceding that he was an almost wholly "left brain" person.
      The idea of "getting it" certainly is applicable to political beliefs, so that some otherwise rational people cannot deeply empathize with the impoverished, the dispossessed, the mentally ill, the physically handicapped. And as for wonder, either you "get it" or you don't, and no amount of argument can convince you otherwise.  Which is why I cannot understand the bitterness sometimes shown by theists and atheists at one another, when neither position can be proven indisputably.
     What, if anything can be done to help someone to "get it?"  I can't answer that question believably; perhaps you can, and if so, let the rest of us know.  There is no doubt that being able to "get" something is a function both of nature and nurture, but which of the two is more important may some day be determined.
     Interestingly, the only time I have seen the concept of  "getting it" in print is in a letter in the current (Oct. 29 & Nov.5, 2012) issue of The New Yorker; a physician berates those who would deny services to the destitute, asserting that those living at the bottom of the financial pyramid "get" their situation better than others.
     Until next time.

Please leave your comment below.

Something About Wonder

     I want to write about wonder.  How to define it so that it makes sense is a serious problem, one I won't attempt to resolve.  Instead, I want to suggest that just as in poetry ideas can be hinted at that can't be adequately defined, so the concept of wonder stands as something we know but have trouble putting into logical terms.  An early effort to deal with the idea is Rudolf Otto's now classic The Idea of the Holy.  The book is an attempt to relate the feeling of awe in a religious, specifically Christian context, but can be usefully read as a secular piece.  One of the difficult aspects of discussing such a concept as wonder or awe is that many such efforts are specifically Christian, and it requires that a serious investigator into the idea relinquish previously held beliefs about religion.  Indeed, perhaps most attempts to pursue the idea of wonder are to be      found in the writings of mystics of all religious denominations, although secular studies also have been published, such as Milton K.Munitz's The Mystery of Existence.  Perhaps the most popular work on the subject of awe as it relates to mysticism is Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism, still in print after a century. A brief summary of which I am fond is F.C. Happold's Mysticism/ A Study and an Anthology.  More recent works are by Frank Collins of genome fame (see the Internet for this).  For those interested in pursuing a more scientific view of the concept, I recommend Krista Tippett's Einstein's God, especially the first chapter.The book consists of a series of interviews with eminent investigators from a broad spectrum of scientific fields.
     Allow me to end this blog by quoting a poem by Walt Whitman that early on led me, a practicing scientist, to recognize that there are experiences beyond the ordinary that allow us to know the world differently than we otherwise might.  It's called, after the first line, When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer.
               When I heard the learn's astronomer,
               When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
               When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
               When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
               How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
               Till rising and gliding out I wandered off by myself,
               In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time,
               Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
     Not to everyone's liking, maybe, but there it is.  If you have anything to add, and if you're alive and thinking you probably have, perhaps you'll let me know.  If you can't otherwise reach me, try clicking  on the word Introduction in the first blog, and a comment space will open up.
     Until next time.