Fathomless Strangeness of the Ordinary
Stephen Greenblatt: Disenchantment, 7 January 1999
Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750
by Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park.
Zone, 511 pp., £19.95, June 1998,0 942299 90 6 Show More
by Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park.
Zone, 511 pp., £19.95, June 1998,
“... was not, however, the only available position: medieval philosophers and theologians influenced by Aristotle sought for the most part to reduce the scope of wonder. The task of the wise man, in the words of a 13th-century text mistakenly attributed to Albertus Magnus, was ‘to make wonders cease’. For them, too great a readiness to marvel at things was the ... ”