How awe drives scientists to make a leap into the unknown | Aeon Essays

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In awe we hold fast to nature’s strangeness and open up to the unknown. No wonder it’s central to the scientific imagination

When a scientific paradigm breaks down, scientists need to make a leap into the unknown. These are moments of revolution, as identified by Thomas Kuhn in the 1960s, when the scientists’ worldview becomes untenable and the agreed-upon and accepted truths of a particular discipline are radically called into question. Beloved theories are revealed to have been built upon sand. Explanations that held up for hundreds of years are now dismissed. A particular and productive way of looking at the world turns out to be erroneous in its essentials. The great scientific revolutions – such as those…

How awe drives scientists to make a leap into the unknown | Aeon Essays

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