The Sense of the Marvellous

Abstract

All incitement to inquiry is born of the novel, the uncommon, and the imperfectly understood. The ordinary, to which we are adapted, takes place almost unnoticed; novel events alone catch the eye and stimulate the attention. It happens thus that the sense of the wonderful, which is a universal attribute of mankind, is of immense import also for the development of science. It is the striking forms and colors of plants and animals, the startling chemical and physical phenomena, that arrest our notice in youth. Only when we compare these with the everyday run of things do we develop, gradually, the craving for explanation.