If “wonder” is being used to denote a reaction in an observer’s mind, then you’re of course right… there was wonder, and now there isn’t, and House is simply wrong.
If “wonder” is being used metonomicly to refer to something in the world that merits being reacted to in that way—the way people use it, for example, in phrases like “the seven wonders of the ancient world”—then it’s not so clearcut.
I like the quote because I interpret it as a weapon against the mind projection fallacy: If something is no longer intrinsically wondrous when the truth is known, then it wasn’t intrinsically wondrous to begin with.
If “wonder” is being used to denote a reaction in an observer’s mind, then you’re of course right… there was wonder, and now there isn’t, and House is simply wrong.
If “wonder” is being used metonomicly to refer to something in the world that merits being reacted to in that way—the way people use it, for example, in phrases like “the seven wonders of the ancient world”—then it’s not so clearcut.
I like the quote because I interpret it as a weapon against the mind projection fallacy: If something is no longer intrinsically wondrous when the truth is known, then it wasn’t intrinsically wondrous to begin with.
It would seem to me that even to think that being wondrous was an intrinsic property would be some sort of mind projection fallacy by itself.
That’s probably what I meant.