Science Fiction and a Sense of Wonder

Science Fiction writers and readers often speak of stories that contain a Sense of Wonder.  What is a sense of wonder?

The years of the Industrial and Scientific Revolution ushered in a new view of the universe remarkably different from the universe of Aristotle and Ptolemy. The Earth was no longer the center.

In a dizzying swoop, Copernicus swept it to the side and placed the sun at the center. Then, with a jar, Kepler announced that the orbit was not an epicycle riding a circle, but an oval. Next, the division between the mundane world of change and decay and the superlunary world of everlasting and divine aether was shattered by Newton like the ceiling of a cathedral collapsing. The Blessed Father Nicolas Steno ushered in the era of modern geography, and the age of the world suddenly stretched backward to remote eons like the famous scene in Hitchcock’s VERTIGO where the grounds seems to swoop away from the dangling feet of Jimmy Stewart.

The first thing to notice about this, is that all these men were Churchmen in Catholic orders. So much for the war between Faith and Science.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.