Wonder, the rainbow, and the aesthetics of rare experiences
This text is about the aesthetics of wonder, about wonder as it figures in relation to the visual world and rare or new experiences. It argues that detailed familiarity is the ultimate meeting point for aesthetic and scientific encounters with novelty, rare experiences and the new.
Print Book, English, 1998
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1998
191 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm
9780674955615, 0674955617
1001200945
The aesthetics of rare experiences; wonder and the sublime; philosophy begins in wonder; visual experience - wonder and the ordinary; the instant of wonder and the instant of thought; the rainbow and Cartesian wonder; the aesthetics of the rainbow; Noah's rainbow and religious intelligibility; from wonder to thought; Descartes and the scientific passion of wonder; Descartes's definition of wonder; Pascal's alternative -imagination, terror, abyss; wonder fades with age; wonder and the steps of thought; the template of wonder - to be human is to learn; one and only one step; Plato's "Meno" and learning by wonder; Socratic silence; explanation and demystification; explanation and the aesthetics of the rainbow; fear of explanation and explanation by fear; the dull catalogue of common things -genus, or explanation by kind; singularity and the everyday; rainbow and raindrop - explanation by substitution; Aristotle's geometry of the experience of rainbows - explanation by structure; from wonder to explanation; transition to aesthetic wonder; seeing what cannot be seen; the visual, the visible and the intelligible; ruling out memory; intelligibility, wonder and recognition; rainbow, explanation, error; recognition - can only memory guide intelligibility?; the newness effect in modern art; thinking through the work of art; Cy Twombly's "blackboard painting"; blackboards and temporary writing; master metaphors and bright ideas; the work of art as a field of details; the return of recognition and memory.