Collecting Conkers in the Autumn

(SA/2026)

 

When all comes to all, the most precious element in life is wonder. 

                                                                       - D. H. Lawrence           

 

 

I. 

 

In so far as young children view the world with a deep sense of wonder they are instinctive philosophers, able to find even the most everyday object or occurrence extraordinary and worthy of attention. 

 

Apparently, this is driven by the biological mechanics of an actively developing brain processing external stimuli and attempting to make sense of the world and their experience of the world.    

 

However, as individuals move into adulthood, their brains undergo a process known as sensory habituation and, having turned the world into something known, they wonder less and less. This has the advantage of allowing them to focus on more important things than puddles, and shadows, and spiders' webs. 

 

And they stop collecting conkers in the autumn ... 

 

 

II.    

 

Having said that, there are some people like me who have defective brains. 

 

We never become cognitively efficient; never become habituated to the phenomenal world. Things, for us, are never conceptually stable; they remain vibrant and astonishing (we have stamped becoming with the character of being, as Nietzsche might say).  

 

And that's why people like me either become artists, or poets, or object-oriented ontologists - and why we continue to gather horse chestnuts in the autumn ...