Lorraine Daston & Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature

"Boyle and many of his contemporaries saw wonder as a goad to inquiry, and wonders as prime objects of investigation. Rene Descartes called won­der the rest of the passions, 'a sudden surprise of the soul which makes it tend to consider attentively those objects which seem to it rare and extra­ordinary'. Francis Bacon included a 'history of marvels' in his program for reforming natural philosophy. [...]  Their focus on wonder and wonders in the study of nature marked a unique moment in the history of European natural philosophy, unprecedented and unrepeated. But before and after this moment, wonder and wonders hovered at the edges of scientific in­quiry. Indeed, they defined those edges, both objectively and subjectively. Wonders as objects marked the outermost limits of the natural. Wonder as a passion registered the line between the known and the unknown."

[...] "As theorized by medieval and early modern intellectuals, wonder was a cognitive passion, as much about knowing as about feeling. To register wonder was to register a breached boundary, a classification subverted."

[...] "The passion of wonder had a mixed reception among late medi­eval and Renaissance natural inquirers, scorned by some as a token of ignorance and praised by others, following Aristotle, as 'the beginning of philosophy.' All, however, agreed that wonder was not simply a private emotional experience but rather, depending on context, a prelude to di­vine contemplation, a shaming admission of ignorance, a cowardly flight into fear of the unknown, or a plunge into energetic investigation."

[...] "Over the course of time, some objects dropped out of this canon for vari­ous reasons. The basilisk was debunked, comets were explained, and uni­corn horns became too common, even before they were reclassified as narwhal tusks: wonders had to be rare, mysterious, and real." 

[...] "The enduring fascination exerted by wonders cries out for explana­tion. How did a miscellany of objects become and remain so emotionally charged? Wonders and wonder limned cognitive boundaries between the natural and the unnatural and between the known and the unknown. They also set cultural boundaries between the domestic and the exotic and between the cultivated and the vulgar. All of these boundaries were electric, thrilling those who approached them with strong passions; to run up against any of these limits was necessarily to challenge the assumptions that ruled ordinary life. No one was ever indifferent to wonders and won­der." [source]