Wonder upon Wonder

I propose a framework for wonder that accounts for its heterogeneity and clarifies disputes about the ethics of wonder. The various species of wonder are unified as responses to a recurrent practical situation: that of recognizing that our mental structures require alteration to cognitively accommodate some object. This recognition is momentous but evaluatively indeterminate, and this provokes a variety of secondary appraisals and coping responses. The heterogeneity of wonder therefore reflects the ethical drama of the diverse ways we grapple with the limits of understanding and the possibilities of transformation.