Awe and Wonder in Scientific Practice: Implications for the Relationship Between Science and Religion

Abstract

This paper examines the role of awe and wonder in scientific practice. Drawing on evidence from psychological research and the writings of scientists and science communicators, I argue that awe and wonder play a crucial role in scientific discovery. They focus our attention on the natural world, encourage openmindedness, diminish the self (particularly feelings of self-importance), help to accord value to the objects that are being studied, and provide a mode of understanding in the absence of full knowledge. I will flesh out implications of the role of awe and wonder in scientific discovery for debates on the relationship between science and religion. Abraham Heschel argued that awe and wonder are religious emotions because they reduce our feelings of self-importance, and thereby help to cultivate the proper reverent attitude towards God. Yet metaphysical naturalists such as Richard Dawkins insist that awe and wonder need not lead to any theistic commitments for scientists. The awe some scientists experience can be regarded as a form of non-theistic spirituality, which is neither a reductive naturalism nor theism. I will attempt to resolve the tension between these views by identifying some common ground.

Awe Therapy: Fundamentals, Formulation and Usage Area

“…Awe is traditionally associated with religious themes (De Cruz, 2020). Abraham Heschel notes that awe is not only an emotion, but also a way of understanding.…”

Religious Experience

“…Of course, it need not always be evil beings that elicit a negatively valenced emotional experience. For example, the feeling of awe, a commonly cited religious emotion often associated with experience of the divine (cf., for example, Wettstein 2012;De Cruz 2020a), appears to represent a complex mixture of positive and negative affective components (Keltner and Haidt 2003;Arcangeli et al 2020). Moreover, it is unclear that the spiritual, moral, and psychological effects of authentic religious experience always take the form of positive "fruits," as many philosophers have proposed.…”

“…In the realm of religious experience, this can mean that the experience of particular groups or persons comes to be overlooked, discounted, or dismissed, on the grounds that it does not conform to the dominant philosophical model of religious experience or permit of "rational assessment" by that model's standards. For this reason, philosophers of religion may need to explicitly seek out discussions of religious experience from those traditionally neglected by the discipline, to introduce "epistemic frictions" into comfortable ways of thinking, and to be prepared to center, rather than tokenize, such discussions, in order to shift the equilibrium in the discipline to one that renders it more inclusive and welcoming of various forms of religious experience (Scheman 2011;De Cruz 2020b).…”

The culture of science communication in rural and regional Australia: the role of awe and wonder

“…Psychology categorises awe and wonder as emotions, and they are crucial for instilling a lifelong interest in STEM [De Cruz, 2020]. L' Ecuyer [2014, p. 6] suggests that wonder "is the centre of all motivation and action in the child" and De Cruz [2020, p. 159] defines awe as "the feeling of experiencing something vast that is beyond our grasp or understanding and that we have a desire to accommodate".…”