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Profession

I am interested in how scholars in different disciplines make sense of their work and the place of that work in their lives. For philosophy I read Falling in Love With Wisdom: American Philosophers Talk About Their Calling (Karnos & Shoemaker, 1993). Can you point me in the direction of other such pieces by philosophers? Thanks, Burt

There is a book called Speaking Minds: Interviews with Twenty Eminent Cognitive Scientists , edited by Baumgartner and Payr, that you might find interesting.
Philosophy

It seems to me that one of the things that philosophy does, at least for me, a beginner, is to expose mysteries where I thought there were none. Do any of you feel the same way, do you like that chill up your spine when you realize what you thought was self-evident might not be? Is the feeling that you have solved the problem more exciting than the feeling of wonder?

I think this feeling of wonder is common among philosophers. It's one of the things that attracted me to philosophy in the first place. And many philosophers have commented on this phenomenon -- e.g., William James in Some Problems of Philosophy : Philosophy, beginning in wonder ... is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the familiar as if it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar. It can take things up and lay them down again. Its mind is full of air that plays round every subject. It rouses us from our native dogmatic slumber and breaks up our caked prejudices.... [A person] with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.

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