"This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it"
About this Quote
Dekker points to a paradox that never ages: knowledge expands, yet mystery does not shrink. After all our science and sciences, the world remains a miracle. The phrasing is deliberate. Science in the singular gestures toward a noble human project; sciences in the plural reminds us of the proliferation of methods and disciplines. Even so, the cumulative weight of explanation fails to empty the world of wonder. It clarifies many things while exposing further depths, like pulling back one curtain only to find another.
The rush of adjectives matters. Wonderful suggests delight, inscrutable names the limits of comprehension, magical evokes a sense of enchantment that resists dry reduction, and more hints at an excess that language cannot quite grasp. Dekker writes at the turn of the 17th century, when experiment and observation were gaining prestige, and his city comedies and pamphlets teem with the vitality of ordinary life. He consistently finds the marvelous in the everyday. That temperament sits behind this line: the point is not to reject reason but to preserve a posture of receptivity as reason advances.
The condition falls on the reader: to whosoever will think of it. Wonder is not a passive mood but an act of attention. Will signals choice; think underscores the contemplative labor required. The world discloses its strangeness to those who look with patience and humility. Far from setting wonder against science, Dekker invites a way of knowing that includes awe as a mode of understanding, an epistemic virtue rather than a childish habit to be outgrown.
The statement continues to resonate in a time when data abounds and explanation is prized. It asks whether exhaustive description satisfies the human hunger for meaning. It suggests that explanation without astonishment is thinner than it needs to be, and that a mature intellect can hold both clarity and reverence without contradiction.
The rush of adjectives matters. Wonderful suggests delight, inscrutable names the limits of comprehension, magical evokes a sense of enchantment that resists dry reduction, and more hints at an excess that language cannot quite grasp. Dekker writes at the turn of the 17th century, when experiment and observation were gaining prestige, and his city comedies and pamphlets teem with the vitality of ordinary life. He consistently finds the marvelous in the everyday. That temperament sits behind this line: the point is not to reject reason but to preserve a posture of receptivity as reason advances.
The condition falls on the reader: to whosoever will think of it. Wonder is not a passive mood but an act of attention. Will signals choice; think underscores the contemplative labor required. The world discloses its strangeness to those who look with patience and humility. Far from setting wonder against science, Dekker invites a way of knowing that includes awe as a mode of understanding, an epistemic virtue rather than a childish habit to be outgrown.
The statement continues to resonate in a time when data abounds and explanation is prized. It asks whether exhaustive description satisfies the human hunger for meaning. It suggests that explanation without astonishment is thinner than it needs to be, and that a mature intellect can hold both clarity and reverence without contradiction.
Quote Details
| Topic | Meaning of Life |
|---|
More Quotes by Thomas
Add to List
