Tom: Welcome to the show, Helen.

Helen: Thank you so much for inviting me, Tom.

Tom: I want to start off by asking you if you can tell me about where you grew up and what life was like in your family.

Helen: Well, I actually grew up in a village close to Ghent in Belgium, which is a tiny country with 10 million, 11 million by now inhabitants, and my family were working class. my father was a bricklayer and an immigrant from Malaysia. And my mother was Belgian.

Basically, I grew up Catholic. Um, And that’s not so surprising in Belgium because, most people are, at least formerly Catholic. It was a very nice childhood, with lots of running around in the neighborhood with friends and doing mischief. So, yeah, I had overall a happy childhood. We weren’t wealthy, but, it was fun.

Tom: Where did your intellectual curiosity take you as a child? What were you most really eager to explore and discover?

Helen: I was interested in everything, so as soon as I learned to read, and by seven I could read fairly well, I got myself a library card.

And very soon I’d read all the books for children that I was interested in. And then I got into the science and art departments. And I got really interested in the crossroad between science and art.

Tom: You wrote in your book that you spent a lot of time in art and science museums growing up. What were the things there that really captivated you?

Helen: I was interested in old science instruments like old microscopes and old seafaring instruments. They give me this sort of sense of connectedness with the past. And then for art, I was also very fortunate. My grandparents lived in Brussels and there was this huge museum of African art and culture.

There was a sort of colonialist flavor to all of it, but it was still something that sort of excited my interest in, how different cultures do things.

So that’s where I discovered that, African societies like Dogon had a very sophisticated style system. So, they could predict all sorts of events in the heavens and they had like their own constellations and festivals relating to that. And I was interested in how, in different cultures, we are interested in the same things like the night sky, all sorts of things that go beyond just getting things done, but that really speak to a curiosity.

Tom: So, you got a very wide ranging, self-directed education growing up. I’m kind of curious, when you headed to college, did you have a certain course of study in mind?

Helen: Yeah. So in Belgium, it’s not like here where you can sort of say “Oh, I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t know what I’m majoring in.” No, in Belgium, you have to choose right away. And I was really perplexed. I was interested in philosophy, but then I talked a bit to philosophy majors, and they gave me the impression philosophy is super Difficult.

And for super clever people, people not like you, even though I had, good grades, but I thought I’m not really a philosopher, a philosopher, somebody in a tweed jacket to thinks the whole day, like I’m not that. but I got interested in art, and I thought art really tells what it is like to be human.

So, that’s why I actually chose for my undergrad, Art history and archaeology, but haven’t done anything with it since.

Tom: I imagine that not a lot of philosophers have a strong background in those areas of art, deep history, intercultural archeology. What does your understanding of explorations of those areas contribute to the way you approach philosophy?

Helen: I think so, yeah. So, I got really interested particularly during my first doctorate in late paleolithic art and culture. Those people didn’t leave any writing, so particularly in Europe and also a bit in South Africa. So, what they did leave behind was beads and cave art.

And somehow the cave art speaks to you.

I still feel like there is something inexplicably. continuous with what those people did and what we do today. And we always talk about the big discontinuities, like AI is now going to revolutionize something. And it’s going to change our lives forever. And some people even think that we’re not going to be human anymore, post human, but I’m sort of thinking like with this deep time perspective, there is something continuous in all of this.

I’m just interested to figure out what it is, like what it is as us, this tiny, tiny planets in this huge and vast universe with our point of view. How does that influence the way that we look at the world? So that, that, that deep time perspective, I think, influences me in thinking about that.

Tom:  Yeah. I want to talk soon about your new book but first let me ask, when did wonder and awe begin to really capture your focused attention as a subject of study and, and perhaps something to then later write about?

Helen: I was always interested in it, but I didn’t think that. I could write a whole book about it. I was very interested in 17th century philosophy and science. I find this European 17th century philosophy and science, I find it utterly fascinating.

If you look at the medieval world view, you had like earth, which was the center of the universe and then you had the heavens, so the stars around that, and everything turned around the earth, But it’s just sort of got all blown open in the 17th century.

Science gave this sense of vastness. So not only did you have like exploration by Europeans showing that the world is so big and that it’s not just Christendom but a wide range of different viewpoints that you really had to reckon with, but also the world is super big, like you have All the stars, so you have Fontanel, that I mention in the book, who talks about it.

Every star is a sun with its own planets. And now you say, yeah, sure. But at the time, this was frightening.

So, people have to come to terms with that. And they, were really motivated by awe and wonder.

Tom: Well, I’m going to turn now specifically to your book, Wonderstruck. The subtitle is how wonder and awe shape the way we think. Can you tell me, how are wonder and awe related? Because you often see those two words together.

Helen: Yeah, so in my view, those are related to emotions. So, I see them as emotions that are both epistemic and self-transcendent.

Epistemic is one of those analytic philosophy words. it means that they have to do with knowledge acquisition. you realize that there is a gap in your knowledge So that’s like what wonder and all do, surprise also does that curiosity also does that, but they have different flavors.

With awe, you have an added dimension. So, on the one hand you realize just things I don’t know the world is bigger than I thought and particularly vaster than I though. So, with awe, you have this gap dimension of vastness. Usually, we have awe at vast things. Doesn’t necessarily have to be physical. You could give awe at like a conceptually vast theory, for example.

With wonder, you have this sense of “This is unusual. This is Interesting. This transfixes me without necessarily this dimension of vastness.” So, like an oddly shaped crystal or snowflakes, they’re all different. Like you look at that and then you get a sense of wonder that you didn’t quite understand the world in all its complexities.

Tom: Yeah, a curiosity that will rivet you, command your attention that you wanna explore and awe might be, oh, when you see a, full solar eclipse, which I did, I traveled to go see it, and it was just astounding. It was, well, I don’t even have words for it, but like the emotions that rose up in me were almost like ethereal. What I don’t understand is why should something like a solar eclipse evoke these sort of emotions in us? Because from a scientific perspective, solar eclipse is just a matter of geometry. As you reflect on humans, especially in big history, why might we react to something that’s just a really statistical oddity in such a powerful way?

Helen: That is such a question that I don’t know if I have the answer to it because it is something that I’ve wondered at. So, I saw like 99 percent solar eclipse. I was quite ill and unable to travel, but fortunately Missouri had 99 percent. So, I was just lying, lying in my lawn on the grass and looking at it.

And what I found so interesting was, I know what’s going to happen. I even saw a completely full eclipse in 2000 around in Belgium. And so, I knew what to expect. And yet, it was astounding. So that means at least from a psychological point of view, that you didn’t fully expect it, because if you fully expected it, you wouldn’t feel awe, but you did. So, there is something more to it. So that clearly shows that a scientific explanation doesn’t fully take away that sense of awe.

And of course, this has been a fascinating discussion that has been going on since Immanuel Kant and Herder. So, Kant basically thought there has to be an element of the unknown.

But Herder said, look, in antiquity, people knew less, so, they’d have more in your view. They would have more awe and wonder, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. It seems like now, now that we know more, we have more. So why is that? So, Herder thought it’s not necessary to have this awe and wonder, element of the unknown.

It’s not necessarily that you are ignorant that you can know, but nonetheless, there is information you get that you can’t fully get beforehand.

Maybe it’s something akin to this famous thought experiment in, analytic philosophy, Mary’s room. Mary has read all about the color red. She has learned all the facts about how color works, but then she goes out and she sees a red rose for the first time. And it does seem like that’s a very moving experience to her because she’s grown up in this black and white room.

And maybe it’s similar to us, like we know all the facts, but still, there is a phenomenology to it that we didn’t quite have with all that scientific information.

Tom: I’m going to circle back to definitions again. You describe awe and wonder as self-transcendent emotions. Can you describe what that means?

Helen: So, there are some emotions that are very much focusing yourself on you. You could have self-pity, for example, like, Oh my goodness, poor me. Or happiness, even, but there are some emotions that really push you out of yourself, and that really help you to focus on the environment.

One such example, just to take a different example, is compassion. Compassion arises when you see undeserved suffering or when you see a vulnerability in somebody that you want to protect or something, like a wounded animal, for example. and that pushes you outside of yourself and might also motivate you to help.

For and it’s the same with awe and wonder. So, they also really get you out of yourself and they focus you on the object of your awe and wonder.

Tom: Coming back to our discussion of big history, the long history of humanity, you noted in your book that art and music and spirituality are present in nearly every human society, anytime, anywhere. In your reflection on this, what does that tell us about humans? That features like this are so universal.?

Helen: I take a leaf out of, anthropologist, Leslie White, and his work on culture. Basically, when he wrote, anthropology was super fragmented Anthropologists were interested in like, in this culture, people have this weird emotion where, you know, you go berserk and in that culture, people have this very weird thing.

And each culture is like completely unique and we have to look at culture within the culture. But Leslie White said, look, you can’t explain culture through culture. And actually, why we have these things like art and religion, he has a sort of biological explanation that I think is very interesting and it really holds up.

And he says that humans have recurring needs. In biology, we focus on the needs of the body, on concrete survival and reproduction. But he says, look, even from a biological perspective, our needs exceed these sort of very bare bones things, human lives are so difficult, like we are beset by war, illness, uncertainty, you could lose your job, you could divorce, you know, all sorts of horrible things can happen to you.

And he says, culture is our way of dealing with that. Art gives us some pleasure, gives us some way to give expression to these emotions. When we enjoy artworks, we sort of say “Oh yes, Bob Dylan exactly phrases how I feel,” right?

Tom: Yeah, art wrestles with probably many of the good features and the not so good features.

Because a lot of characters of art are designed to make us feel uncomfortable too, right? They don’t always necessarily delight and give us pleasure, but they make us, in many ways feel troubled or expose things about our society that, go ignored, right?

Helen: That’s right. And I think that’s important too. Like, sometimes you do have this feeling of, things are not okay. Like, just to give an example, so I’m quite ill now, I am, in cancer treatment. and one thing I really enjoy now is reading Lovecraft. And I’m thinking, like, why do I enjoy reading Lovecraft? But I think I understand why.

So, his characters are always afraid. They’re afraid of everything. They’re afraid of air conditioning, for example. It’s kind of funny. But I think that he uncovers these sorts of cosmic horror, the horror at the world, the horror at the bleakness of the world, at the vastness, at the indifference that the universe seems to have for us.

And I find it comforting to get that fear acknowledged. if you just want to do a happy clappy and saying, yeah, it’s all okay. that sort of erases a lot of our experiences.

Tom: As we can continue to look at sort of these human universals, how do you think feelings of wonder and awe have influenced and shaped human history? either on small scales or big scales.

Helen: I think they have a huge influence. So, one of the things I argue in the book goes back to Aristotle. So, Aristotle, in the beginning of the metaphysics said that all humans Have a desire to know. And so, they began wandering. He says, they wandered at little things and then they went further and further into bigger and bigger questions, like the beginning of the universe. It’s kind of amazing if you think about it.

Like, how could you think that bipedal apes would ever learn anything about where they came from or what the universe came out of? It’s actually astounding if you think about it. And wonder is one of the drives that really, I think, pushes us to those heights that, are characteristic of our species.

It’s sort of in vogue, at least in academic circles that I am in. to sort of see humans as horrible, like we’re a scar on the earth and, climate change and warfare. But actually, you know, we are pretty amazing.

And I think one of the things that makes us amazing is that we lean into this sense of wonder and awe. And it helps us to make amazing things, to try to figure out more about ourselves, to make these wonderful, what I call cognitive technologies of religion and art and mathematics and things like that.

Tom: What things do you think are missing from our sort of common lives now that are really disconnected from all of human history?

Helen: Our lives are unusually regimented. If we look at GPS data then you just see that many people make very predictable movements, like, oh yeah, I’m going to the shops and I’m going to work. So, Abraham Joshua Heschel argues that the problem with that is that you take things for granted because your life is so regimented.

You don’t realize anymore how wild and unpredictable and interesting and deep. the universe really is. So, it’s easy to sort of fall into this pattern of predictability and reliability and to think, yeah, science has it all figured out. and that’s of course the downside. If something horrible happens to you, like a car accident or a serious illness, then suddenly it’s all revealed to be a lie.

All of a sudden, you are faced with this huge uncertainty, but in part it is because we just don’t have a space for uncertainty in our lives. So, Heschel calls this the fakeness of modernity, and he thinks that, that religion is a way to at least try to get the sense of awe and wonder back, which he thinks are foundational to human life.

He doesn’t think like science is bad, but he thinks all the comforts that science offers, even air conditioning, for example. I don’t even feel the seasons. I’m actually happy for that because the seasons here are quite rough. it’s over 100 degrees in the summer and very humid. And I sit here in 70 something degrees. Nicely climatized, but you don’t even feel the seasons anymore, and even though you do have comfort, the tradeoff is that it’s a false sense of comfort.

It sort of gives you a certain flatness of being.

Tom: We’ve talked a bit about how wonder and awe relate to science, to art, applies to religion. you mention in your book that wonder and awe also apply to ethics. Can you explore a little bit about the ethical dimension of wonder and awe?

Helen: Yeah, so, wonder and awe, because they’re self-transcendent emotions, what they, do help you to realize is that you are not the center of the universe. We’re always the main character in our own story, but at least when you feel a sense of wonder or awe, you realize that the universe is really very big, and I’m just a small element in all of this. And that gives you a sense of humility. So, Kant ends his critique of practical reason with these beautiful words:

“There’s two things that fill me with admiration the more my mind dwells onto it. And it’s the starry sky above and the moral law within.”

And he gets a sense of admirational awe. for both those things.

It seems that this has implications for ethics, right? It seems like, yeah, I could just go on thinking I’m just a main character in my story, but it seems natural to, to orient your life in a different way.

Tom: What about the ethical dimension of wonder and awe itself? Are they necessarily always good emotions? Are they neutral? Is there a dark side? How do we look at the ethical side of, of wonder and awe?

So many people like Rachel Carson think that awe and wonder really help us to have an ethical orientation.

And you have the same with Martha Nussbaum. Martha Nussbaum also thinks that because Wanda is self-transcendent. that you wouldn’t be locked up in yourself and purely your own concerns. There is a dark side to it.

One dark side to it is one thing that Descartes already warned about. So, Descartes was one of the early theorists on wonder, and he thinks wonder is very useful for science, but he also thinks that you can wonder too much. And that’s actually a common topic in Descartes. Descartes thinks emotions, so unlike what you would think with our stern rationalists and dualists, it isn’t the case that he thinks it’s bad to have emotions, but he thinks you should be the master of your emotions.

And if you wander too much, it could go wrong, and you could actually go further from the truth.

An example that I give that is contemporary is like, you have people who are interested in flat earth, and so there’s an enormous amount of wonder in these flat earth videos, but clearly, you’re going further away from the truth if you believe these conspiracy theories, like, oh, people never landed with the Apollo landings, you’re getting further from the truth. And so, a lot of conspiracy theorizing is actually wonder. So, that’s bad.

There’s another form of wonder that it didn’t discuss because it goes into a political side, and I just want to write a short book.

So, but that is just wandering all. Like Hitler was super charismatic. And people would flock to him, it’s kind of scary, right? So, that doesn’t discriminate between good or bad. Now we think like, how could so many people be taken in, but they clearly had awe at the great leader.

Tom: Well, with the time that we have left, I’m going to come full circle and ask you a few more personal questions. And I wonder what are some of your best memories of being filled with wonder and awe?

I like the renaissance. And so, when I was 15, I went to Rome, and I had studied in detail the Sistine Chapel and it was just restored.

So, it was like very sooty because you have all those centuries of candles and incense that sort of left, but now it was all beautifully restored. And I was expecting to be awed, but yet it somehow exceeded my expectations. And it was just such a, a marvelous feeling of being in the presence of great art.

I’ll never forget it. that was a beautiful experience.

But as I say in the book, like you don’t have to necessarily go far away. You could find. Awe and wonder also in seeing flowers on, on, on a tree in spring. So, yeah. Many moments.

Tom: Yeah. when we look for it, there’s so much in this world that can be positively exhilarating and delightful. On the flip side too, there’s, a tough thing, as you mentioned earlier, of, being terribly sick. through the lens of, struggling with, sickness and, and suffering, does that give you some extra insights into Wonder and Awe as well?

Helen: I think so. I think it gave me an appreciation for, both the limits and the possibilities of science. So, like, if I’d had this particular cancer ten years ago, things would have looked really bad. Now things look better.

And there’s also like the fragility of life. I was thinking, okay, do I, as a philosopher, do I have better insights? Can I deal with this better? And I just actually don’t know. I hope that, that there are some insights that philosophers have given that help us to deal with things.

But basically some stuff in human lives is just incredibly difficult. and mortality and illness. Are those things that we keep on dealing with and there’s only so well that you can deal with I know there’s some people who say “Oh, I don’t care, I’m just like completely serene and I’m completely stoically zoomed out,” And great for them, but for many people, it’s just a struggle.

Tom: Wait, are you human?

Helen: Yes! Are you human?

It’s okay. It’s okay. No matter how much philosophy, I think ultimately, we’re all human beings, no matter what a great scientist or whatever you are at the end of the day, those people who invent those systems, who invent those great cures, they’re all human beings.

They all have the same problems facing them, mortality, raising your kids, things like that. and that just remains tough, no matter what. ingenious cognitive technologies we come up with.

Tom: Well, while we’re talking about universalities and continuity across time, humans have had a long history of squabbles and conflicts, but as our civilization has grown more powerful, the consequences get bigger, whether it’s warfare or environmental destruction. I think there’s a lot in our modern context that gives us a lot to worry about.

I’m wondering, as you reflect, what gives you hope about the future?

Helen: I’m actually fairly optimistic, about the future. Like I know there’s climate change. I know it’s actually sort of the custom to be very doomerish now, like, Oh, population growth, pandemics, Many people that I know who are in my circles are incredibly pessimistic. On the other hand, you have those people who say we’re marching steadily forward. It’s a lot better now. with like cures for diseases, life expectancy is going up, particularly in developing countries and that is great. Like, we shouldn’t discount that.

But I think overall, we are all on the same side. Many people when they reflect about it, they’d say I’d love a situation of peace, prosperity, where people can express themselves and be happy.

So, because we have that desire, that there are reasons for optimism, and we have that desire because most of us realize that we aren’t isolated, that my well-being depends on your well-being and that we should work together to make it happen.