Wonder: From Emotion to Spirituality
It seems self-contradictory that one could write tediously about wonder, but religious studies scholar Fuller (Spiritual but Not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America) manages to do just that as he chronicles the study of wonder's evolutionary-adaptive uses in Darwin'sThe Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animalsand its ethical applications in philosopher Martha Nussbaum's writings on emotions. Wonder opens us to an unseen world beyond ourselves, Fuller observes, permitting us to think of wonder more as a religious sensibility than an emotion. Fuller offers short case studies—of John Muir, William James and Rachel Carson—to show how these three saw the world around them as an ineffable mystery whose organic unity calls for an experience of wonder rather than a cold scientific explanation. Fuller prosaically concludes that wonder functions as a neurophysiological response to unexpected events and that it seeks to penetrate what can't be seen; thus, wonder is "one of the principal sources of belief in an unseen order." Fuller's book is repetitious—he relates the story about the lack of the word "wonder" in psychology textbooks three times in close succession—and reveals little compelling or new information. 3 illus.(Feb. 27)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.