Definition
Wonder is the response of awe, curiosity, and heightened attention prompted by the natural world — the feeling of being struck by the scale, intricacy, or strangeness of reality.
A common worry is that scientific explanation drains wonder away, replacing mystery with mechanism. Dawkins argues the opposite: that understanding how something works tends to enlarge the sense of wonder rather than dispel it.
Why it matters
How it works
The argument is that knowing the mechanism behind a phenomenon — the structure of a cell, the age of the light from a distant star, the branching of the tree of life — does not flatten it. Each explanation opens onto further questions and finer detail, and the felt response is amazement at how much there is.
Dawkins frames this as the positive side of his case: the natural world, accurately understood, offers ample material for awe.