Wonderment. Perspectives on a Phenomenon between Nature and Culture (2016–2018)

Research colloquium & cooperative study (German Academic Scholarship Foundation, Elisabeth and Helmut Uhl Foundation, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz)

What happens when people are amazed? This question, which is also relevant to the study of music, was the focus of two transdisciplinary research colloquia at the Buchnerhof meeting center in Bolzano/South Tyrol, which took place in the summers of 2016 and 2017. They brought together the disciplines of philosophy, theology, Romance studies, German studies, linguistics, art history, music and media studies, music practice, mathematics and physics in order to jointly locate amazement in the field of tension between nature and culture. The study, which was developed as part of the research colloquia, draws on impulses from philosophy, art, literature, technology and the natural sciences and approaches amazement systematically. The various specialist perspectives are linked by the desire to investigate how amazement is inscribed in the relationship between nature and culture in specific individual cases. This shows that amazement is far more than just a momentary affect beyond the human mind. The resulting study has been included in the publication series of the SNF-Sinergia project "The Power of Wonder".

Further information: Event report and publisher's information on the resulting publication

Project Leader: Timo Kehren, Carolin Krahn, Georg Oswald, Christoph Poetsch