I agree with Albert Knox's statement "It seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world." in Sophie's World, because I think we really do become unenthusiastic about things that happen to us in our everyday life, unless it is something VERY unordinary, like the story of little Thomas told on page 19. Little Thomas was not surprised to see his Dad floating around the room, because he doesnt know that this isn't what usually happens in daily life. However, his Mom was surprised, and as a result of this surprise, even dropped her jar of jam because she knows that a human floating is not something normal to happen in life, as well as to a normal human being.
We all lose interest in the world itself because we get used to them, like a 'habit', as mentioned in the book. After the story of little Thomas is mentioned, Sophie goes up to her own mother and asks about life and human's existence. But her mom does not show enthusiasm in the topic and even asks if anything has gone wrong to Sophie. This shows how grown up people get so used to the fact that they 'live', and do not even question why they are here today because it is what they have done all life.
In Religious Studies classes, my class sometimes discussed about God's existence, and it always lead to questioning the existence of the world. The topic is interesting to discuss about, but in the end I felt really confused because we never reached to exact conclusion of why we are here, and why the earth exists today. I felt really confused and tired, because the wonders for these philosophical questions are never answered properly unlike in Maths, where we have exact answers for an equation. I also feel that any 'answer' satisfies us humans - if we have a question about something, we would like them answered, instead of leaving it all blank because it feels very uncomfortable not knowing a fact about something. Therefore, when we have questions that we don't really have an answer to, we tend to just leave it, and it soon fades away.
So as we grow up, we don't really wonder about things anymore - firstly we get used to them because we have to live with it everyday, and secondly from my perspective, we don't really put our unanswered questions first priority anymore as we grow up.
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3 comments:
I would not say everyone loses interest in the world. As there are philosophers nowadays and you guys still discuss how the world was created during r.s. lessons.
And I would like to say I disagree with the fact that you said people will lose interest in a question that cannot be answered. I think that people will be more determined to find out the answer of things they don't know or cannot be answered and wonder about life, or the world, leading to philosophers and religious people present in this world.
If they did not think have the ability to "wonder" they would not have believed or become religious.
I totally agree with Lori, especially on the point that people will carry on to pursue the 'unanswered' question(s). I believe that most questions have been 'answered' by someone at some point, but it is up to us, as individuals to accept or reject the 'answer(s)'.
Therefore, 'unanswered' questions, for example, 'Where did the world come from?' mostly do not just 'fade away', instead, they follow us.
I do agree with Lori on some points, that there are some exceptions of adults who still wonder about the unknown questions about earth and just life itself. Also I have to disagree with you on the point that we leave unanswered questions just simply because we don't know the answer, even though as you said its not like in maths where there is always a right and wrong answer, for some of the questions we ask there ARE answers out there somewhere but they're just so open ended that we have to come up with our own conclusions, and how we find the answer is based on philosophers constantly building up their answers upon anothers work..so bit by bit we are developing an answer
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