What is awe and wonder?

 At times when I contemplate nature, science, humanity, and Biblical texts I have a sense of awe and wonder. What do I mean by that? I know it when I feel it but it is hard to describe in words.

Members of my family have been reading Phosphorescence: On awe, wonder, and things that sustain you when the world goes dark, by Julia Baird. In this memoir, she intersperses descriptions of her own experiences of awe and wonder, her struggle with cancer, scientific studies on the value of encounters with nature, her struggles with churches, her own faith, and what all this may mean for a fulfilling life. She includes quotations from famous people that I found helpful in considering how might define and characterise awe and wonder. 

Awe makes us stop and stare. Awe humbles us, gives us perspective, and makes us aware that the world is unfathomably larger than ourselves.

Wonder makes us stop and ask questions about the world.

Here are quotes from Einstein, Adam Smith, and Rachel Carson.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

Albert Einstein

Adam Smith was a moral philosopher and the founder of modern economics. He said that wonder occurs

“when something quite new and singular is presented… [and] memory cannot, from all its stores, cast up any image that nearly resembles this strange appearance.”

This wonder can be felt physically, characterised by

‘that staring, and sometimes that rolling of the eyes, that suspension of the breath, and that swelling of the heart’.

Adam Smith, A History of Astronomy

“Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties or mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life… Their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.” 

Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

To me this is a hint of transcendence. There is something going on and behind this which goes beyond material reality and what we can quantify, control, and describe.