How UC Davis scientists and educators recommend harnessing awe in the everyday

FEATURED STORY: When was the last time you felt awe? You may call it something else, but you know the sensation — the wide-eyed, hushed-voice, goosebumps-down-the-back feeling that comes with grand, novel experiences.

This week’s featured article is ostensibly a science story, but I was inspired to write it by a humanities course I took at UC Berkeley last semester. (In addition to being the digital editor of Comstock’s, I’m a PhD student at UC Davis.) The course, “Transcendentalism and Beyond,” was in the English department, but it felt more like a philosophy class. For nearly four months, I spent one evening per week debating the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William James and other Transcendentalist figures in a cramped corner of Berkeley’s sprawling Social Sciences building.

The thing is, I really don’t like philosophy. Nothing irritates me more than old dead men expostulating on how they know the right way to live, perceive reality and be in the world. Despite now being on my third literature degree, I avoided reading Hegel and Kant until this year (as you may have noticed if you watched my “recommendations” section in this newsletter). By the fourth week of the course, I was dreading the train ride and uphill cycle to Berkeley, regretting my registration-week decisions.

Then something odd started to happen. I realized some of Emerson’s words were echoing through my mind. As I walked around the Davis arboretum, I remembered a passage from “Nature,” in which Emerson reflects on a walk in the woods.

There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite spaces, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

So when I read this UC Davis press release on awe science, an emerging field clearly inspired by Transcendentalist philosophy, my interest was piqued. The scientific papers I read for this article were peppered with quotes from Emerson, James and others — unusual for articles published under tags like “neuroscience” and “behavioral health.”

I hope I got that unusual hybridization between science and philosophy across in this piece. I think it’s a good example of what can happen when the humanities and the sciences break down their silos and work together.

– Jennifer Fergesen, digital editor

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Recommendations From Our Staff

Dakota: When I go to the library, I always pick out a random cookbook to mine for recipes. This month, it’s “400 Soups,” which is exactly what I need heading into the fall. Who wants the same-old chicken noodle with alternatives like hot-and-sour fish soup, Indian beef and berry soup and Jamaican rice and pea soup with salt cod?

Judy: Is attending a business journalism fellowship program in Washington, D.C.!

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