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Memes tagged “wonder”

61–80 of 121

Wonder Motivates

Wonder was the motive that led people to philosophy ... wonder is a kind of desire in knowledge. It is the cause of delight because it carries with it the hope of discovery.

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Mathematicians Must be Adventurers

There is no thing as a man who does not create mathematics and yet is a fine mathematics teacher. Textbooks, course material—these do not approach in importance the communication of what mathematics is really about, of where it is going, and of where it currently stands with respect to the specific branch of it being…

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Parenting is Receiving as Well as Giving

As a new parent, you may feel sometimes that all children do is take from you, but it is just a form of giving in disguise. Kids present you with an ear infection, but what they are really giving you is patience. They present you with a tantrum, but they are really giving you the honor of witnessing a developing…

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Children are Scientists

Thousands of experiments confirm that babies learn about their environment through a series of increasingly self-corrected ideas. They experience sensory observations, make predictions about what they observe, design and deploy experiments capable of testing their predictions, evaluate their tests, and add that…

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The Development of the Human Brain

Two types of cells are important here. The first type, glial cells, make up 90 percent of the brain cells inside your child’s head. They give the brain its structure and help the neurons correctly process information. It’s a good name; glial is a Greek word for glue. The second type of cell is the familiar neuron…

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The Wonder of the Fertilized Egg

The opening cast members of the baby-making play are simply a sperm and an egg and a saucy Marvin Gaye song. Once these two cells are joined, they begin producing lots of cells in a small space. The human embryo soon looks like a tiny mulberry. (Indeed, one early development stage is called the morula, Latin for…

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The Biological Big Bang

As a scientist, I was very aware that watching a baby’s brain develop feels as if you have a front-row seat to a biological Big Bang. The brain starts out as a single cell in the womb, quiet as a secret. Within a few weeks, it is pumping out nerve cells at the astonishing rate of 8,000 per second. Within a few months…

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Take Hope in the Complexity of Nature

Meantime, let no man be alarmed at the multitude of particulars, but let this rather encourage him to hope. For the particular phenomena of art and nature are but a handful to the inventions of the wit, when disjoined and separated from the evidence of things. Moreover, this road has an issue in the open ground and…

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Experiments of Light Versus Those of Fruit

Again, even in the great plenty of mechanical experiments, there is yet a great scarcity of those which are of most use for the information of the understanding. For the mechanic, not troubling himself with the investigation of truth, confines his attention to those things which bear upon his particular work, and will…

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Being a Responsive and Involved Parent

Responsiveness is closely related to nurturing. For infants, responsive caregiving means not only prompt responding to a baby's physical needs interaction. Babies do cry out of boredom and their verbalizatinn—all that interaction. Babies do cry out of boredom, and their verbalization—all that enchanting cooing and…

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Using Evolutionary History to Guide Us

Obtaining a more broadly informed view of parenting means examining parenting styles not just cross-culturally but through evolutionary history as well. Underneath the cultural twists that skew our behavior lies a natural biology, a human nature, that evolved a certain way for good biological reasons. Organic beings…

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The Night Listening Game

The sound of the insect orchestra swells and throbs night after night, from midsummer until autumn ends and the frosty nights make the tiny players stiff and numb, and finally the last note is stilled in the long cold. An hour of hunting out the small musicians by flashlight is an adventure any child would love. It…

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If We Only Saw the Stars One Night Every 100 Years

We lay and looked up at the sky and the millions of stars that blazed in darkness. The night was so still that we could hear the buoy on the ledges out beyond the mouth of the bay. Once or twice a word spoken by someone on the far shore was carried across the clear air. A few lights burned in the cottages. Otherwise…

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The Perpetual Renewal That Comes From the Natural World

Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the…

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We Should Appreciate the Winter Solstice

We have become too wise in our own conceits if ever we let a winter solstice go by without a glance upward to rejoice that the sun will sink no lower in the darkening sky . .. We walk too hurriedly if ever we pass the season’s first pasqueflower by, too busy to let its meeting stay us for a quiet moment before this…

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Teddy Roosevelt Considers the Night Sky

After an evening of talk, perhaps about the fringes of knowledge, or some new possibility of climbing inside the minds and senses of animals, we would go out on the lawn, where we took turns at an amusing little astronomical rite. We searched until we found, with or without glasses, the faint, heavenly spot of…

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The Efforts and Rewards of Naturalism

One day I buried myself, prone, in the muck of a muskrat house. While my clothes absorbed local color, my eyes absorbed the lore of the marsh. A hen redhead cruised by with her convoy of ducklings, pink-billed fluffs of greenish-golden down. A Virginia rail nearly brushed my nose. The shadow of a pelican sailed over a…

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