ABSTRACT
Thaumazein, astonishment, Aristotle says, is provoked by aporias. According to him the difficulties that arose for the early philosophers were first to do with matters close at hand but later concerned remoter questions, questions about the solstices, for example, and the genesis of the universe, pen tés tou pantos geneseós (982b 17). As with Plato, the aporias often have the form of apparent contradictions, such as the prospect of dolls at a puppet show behaving as though they were alive, and the idea that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with the side. When the cause of the puppet’s movements has been revealed and when we have learned a little geometry our astonishment disappears. What would astonish us then is the suggestion that what we now believe to be possible is not. These are two cases that Aristotle regards as ones that might give rise to astonishment with anyone at some stage. He mentions them immediately after stating that ‘all men begin, as we said, by wondering that all things are as they are’, archontai men gar, hôsper eipomen, apo tou thaumazein pantes ei outós echei (983a 12). The ‘as we said’ refers back to a passage that attributes wonder to any beginning philosopher. It appears to follow that any puzzled person is a philosopher provided he seeks to remove that puzzlement and that his desire to achieve the knowledge that will remove it as a desire for knowledge for its own sake, not just for the sake of removing the puzzlement and not as a means to some further end. As support for his analysis Aristotle appeals to what he sees as the historical fact that it is only when man’s economic needs are secured that he begins to seek knowledge for its own sake.
