Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750

One of the main themes the authors deal with is not exactly an historical overview of science, but more along the lines of social and cultural history. They write about the relationship of elites, be they religious, social, or academic, to various kinds of wonder. Do the elites embrace wonder? Do they despise it? And what about lone philosophers? Where do they fit in? The answers vary greatly, according to multitudinous factors. For me, one theme to bear in mind while reading this book was my own experience of wonder, or curiosity, and the clashing of that feeling with "The Game" in school... Anyone reading this book will, obviously, have an extremely active, inquisitive mind, to say the least. Think back (or think forward, as the case may be,) to your time in school. Did you tend to keep the topics that provoked genuine wonder in you private? Did you generally avoid mentioning them, lest they should happen to become candidates for impacting "The Game," over which the more sociable people in any classroom preside? These are two very different states of mind, and their interplay can be quite fearfully tumultuous. If you know what I'm talking about, then you already have a feel for the kind of issues that the authors of this book delve into, and deal with on an incredibly grand scale.

By the way, I'd like to recommend a couple of other titles for people looking at this book. For some reason, neither of these are in this book's bibliography. I'm not sure why not -- probably because they are so basic that the authors may have felt that anyone reading their book would already know about them. For people who might NOT know about them, I'd like to recommend "The Great Chain of Being," by Arthur O. Lovejoy, and Rudolph Pfeiffer's two volume study of "The History of Classical Scholarship." These volumes will add whole dimensions to your understanding of the matters that Daston and Park discuss, if anybody out there is interested.

This book is a prodigious feat. Worth scoping out.