@philosophyminis: To watch my full interview with Rob Macfarlane about his new The Book of Birds, you can subscribe to my newsletter via the link in bio. Here’s the transcript: The physicist Richard Feynman once argued that the greatest achievements in life come not from discipline, or ambition, or even talent. They stem from that strange, restless, and almost childlike capacity to be curious about something, and to follow that curiosity where it leads. Feynman's point is that the greatest moment in history start with a question. It's when someone, somewhere, asks why. It's when a child looks at the sky, and sees a bird flying past, and asks why are they flying, and how are they doing it? This is what Rob MacFarlane told me about it in this week's Mini Philosophy interview. “For Descartes wonder is the first of all the emotions. It's because he says it has a two stroke dynamic to it. So first we are amazed. That is, we are wonder struck. And then what follows is the impulse to explain the cause of the wonder. So Descartes sees wonder as the sort of prima mobile of, of the scientific method. So it's the this or that encourages us to, to comprehend cause and effect.” “The world is full of wonder” is such a clichéd thing to say, but it moves from being a cliche to a lived truth when we let ourselves be wonderstruck. It's only when we pause to appreciate a bird's effortless glide, or to hear its trilling song, that we can invite wonder in. The question isn't whether the world is full of wonder. It is. The question is what we can do to invite more of that wonder in to our lives.

Jonny Thomson

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Friday 08 May 2026 16:23:57 GMT