{"id":7589,"date":"2024-05-21T15:27:07","date_gmt":"2024-05-21T19:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/darwin-on-wonder-and-the-spirituality-of-nature-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2024-05-21T15:27:07","modified_gmt":"2024-05-21T19:27:07","slug":"darwin-on-wonder-and-the-spirituality-of-nature-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/darwin-on-wonder-and-the-spirituality-of-nature-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Darwin on Wonder and the Spirituality of Nature \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
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\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance hurtling through a cold cosmos that has no accord for our wishes, takes no interest in our dreams. \u201cI can\u2019t but believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and unfailing appearances and exits, are something more than mathematics and horrible temperatures,\u201d Willa Cather wrote to the love of her life<\/a> while watching the transcendent spectacle of Jupiter and Venus rising in the summer sky. \u201cIf they are not, then we are the only wonderful things \u2014 because we can wonder.\u201d <\/p>\n

That we can wonder is what saves us. The price evolution had us pay for our exquisite consciousness is an awareness of our mortality \u2014 an awareness unbearable without the capacity for wonder at the miracle of existing at all, improbable as we each are against the staggering odds of never having been born<\/a>, alive on an improbable world unlike any other known. Wonder is the religion nature invented long before we told our first myths of prophets and messiahs, the great benediction of our fate as borrowed stardust on short-term loan from an entropic universe. <\/p>\n

A century before the pioneering neuroscientist Charles Scott Sherrington formulated his notion of \u201cNatural Religion,\u201d<\/a> placing at its center our capacity for and responsibility to wonder, before Rachel Carson insisted that wonder is our greatest antidote to self-destruction<\/a> and that \u201cnatural beauty has a necessary place in the spiritual development of any individual or any society,\u201d<\/a> the young Charles Darwin<\/strong> (February 12, 1809\u2013April 19, 1882) discovered that experiences of wonder \u2014 which he defined as \u201ca chaos of delight\u201d<\/a> \u2014 are profoundly spiritual and come most readily in raw nature. <\/p>\n

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Charles Darwin in his twenties<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In early 1835, with the Beagle<\/em> docked in Chile for repairs four years into its voyage, the twenty-six-year-old Darwin hired muleteers and set out to cross the Andes on foot and hoof, relishing the exposed face of Earth\u2019s geologic history in the dramatic landscape. By mid-March, he reached the Piuquenes pass connecting Argentina and Chile and began the trying ascent. Breathing became \u201cdeep and laborious.\u201d He felt the tightness in his chest. The mules panted and stopped every fifty feet. But when he stumbled upon some fossil shells on the ridge, he \u201centirely forgot\u201d the altitude sickness in his delight. <\/p>\n

And then, approaching the summit against wind \u201cimpetuous and extremely cold,\u201d he encountered something belonging to the enchanting canon of the unphotographable<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Standing there amid the austere beauty of the mountain and the elements in their extreme, with petrified pieces of deep time in his pocket, Darwin touched God. <\/p>\n

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\u201cView of Nature in Ascending Regions\u201d by Levi Walter Yaggy from Geographical Portfolio<\/em>, 1893. (Available as a print<\/a> and as stationery cards<\/a>.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In an account later included in his memoir A Naturalist\u2019s Voyage Round the World<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a> | free ebook<\/em><\/a>), he writes:<\/p>\n

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When near the summit, the wind, as generally happens, was impetuous and extremely cold. On each side of the ridge we had to pass over broad bands of perpetual snow, which were now soon to be covered by a fresh layer. When we reached the crest and looked backwards, a glorious view was presented. The atmosphere resplendently clear; the sky an intense blue; the profound valleys; the wild broken forms: the heaps of ruins, piled up during the lapse of ages; the bright-coloured rocks, contrasted with the quiet mountains of snow, all these together produced a scene no one could have imagined. Neither plant nor bird, excepting a few condors wheeling around the higher pinnacles, distracted my attention from the inanimate mass. I felt glad that I was alone: it was like watching a thunderstorm, or hearing in full orchestra a chorus of the Messiah.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Complement with Coleridge\u2019s transcendent experience of a thunderstorm<\/a> and Ren\u00e9 Daumal on the mountain and the meaning of life<\/a>, then revisit Darwin\u2019s deathbed reflection on what makes life worth living<\/a> and the bittersweet story of his beloved daughter<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Profit<\/a>
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