“But I’d agree that if a scientific understanding destroyed Keats’s sense of wonder, then that was a bug in Keats”
If Keats could turn his wonder on and off like a light switch, then clearly he was being silly in withholding his wonder from science. Since science is clearly true, in order to maximize his wonder Keats should have pressed the “off” button for wonder based on ideas like rainbows being Bifrost the magic bridge to Heaven, and the “on” button for wonder based on science.
But Keats, and the rest of us, can’t turn wonder on and off like that. Certain things like bridges to Heaven, or gnomes, naturally induce wonder in most people, without any special choice to take wonder in them. Certain other things like optics don’t. It’s not just a coincidence that there are more Lord of the Rings fanboys than Snell’s Law fanboys out there. I don’t know enough to say whether that’s cultural or genetic, but I’m pretty sure it’s not under my immediate conscious control.
Maybe with proper study of optics, some people will find it just as wonderful as they found the magic bridge Bifrost. But “With enough study, optics will become at least as wonderful as divine bridges are, and this is true for every single person on Earth regardless of variations in their personal sense of wonder” is a statement that needs proving, not a premise.
And if that statement’s false, and if there are some people who really would prefer the possible world containing Bifrost to the possible world containing optics, then those people are perfectly justified in feeling sorrow that they live in the world with optics and no Bifrost. To be a good rationalist, such a person certainly has to willingly accept the scientific evidence that there is no Bifrost, but doesn’t gain any extra rationality points by prancing about singing “Oh, joy, the refraction of light through water droplets in accordance with mathematical formulae is ever so much more wonderful than a magical bridge to Heaven could ever be.”
“But I’d agree that if a scientific understanding destroyed Keats’s sense of wonder, then that was a bug in Keats”
If Keats could turn his wonder on and off like a light switch, then clearly he was being silly in withholding his wonder from science. Since science is clearly true, in order to maximize his wonder Keats should have pressed the “off” button for wonder based on ideas like rainbows being Bifrost the magic bridge to Heaven, and the “on” button for wonder based on science.
But Keats, and the rest of us, can’t turn wonder on and off like that. Certain things like bridges to Heaven, or gnomes, naturally induce wonder in most people, without any special choice to take wonder in them. Certain other things like optics don’t. It’s not just a coincidence that there are more Lord of the Rings fanboys than Snell’s Law fanboys out there. I don’t know enough to say whether that’s cultural or genetic, but I’m pretty sure it’s not under my immediate conscious control.
Maybe with proper study of optics, some people will find it just as wonderful as they found the magic bridge Bifrost. But “With enough study, optics will become at least as wonderful as divine bridges are, and this is true for every single person on Earth regardless of variations in their personal sense of wonder” is a statement that needs proving, not a premise.
And if that statement’s false, and if there are some people who really would prefer the possible world containing Bifrost to the possible world containing optics, then those people are perfectly justified in feeling sorrow that they live in the world with optics and no Bifrost. To be a good rationalist, such a person certainly has to willingly accept the scientific evidence that there is no Bifrost, but doesn’t gain any extra rationality points by prancing about singing “Oh, joy, the refraction of light through water droplets in accordance with mathematical formulae is ever so much more wonderful than a magical bridge to Heaven could ever be.”
Shouldn’t he have just left it on, all the time?