Trigger Happy
fire. Now, it is true that the great cathedrals of Europe, at Rome, Chartres or Cologne, purposively evoke wonder not as a purely aesthetic end in itself, but as a means to lead the spectator to humble contemplation of his or her impotence in the face of the grandeur of God. Videogames, on the other hand, represent the latest stage in the secularization of wonder that has been abroad since the fine arts were divorced from religion and aesthetics was invented. Some people deplore this development;57 others argue intriguingly that wonder has always been equally a secular instinct, providing the motivation for empirical scientific investigation.58
Wonder has always been a spur to action, whether creative or pious. Our wonder at the alien potency of fire once led us to invent a beautiful story about a renegade god whose gift to men brought him tortuous retribution. In a later age, wonder at the fiery vault of the heavens led us to refine and systematize the science of astronomy. There is no reason in principle
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57 See the baleful jeremiads of Roger Scruton’s An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Culture (South Bend, Indiana: Saint Augustine’s Press, 2000).
58 This is the argument of Philip Fisher’s fascinating Wonder, the Rainbow, and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).
