Thomas Aquinas in Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, quoted by Josef Pieper, who adds:

And because of their common power to disturb and transcend, all these basic behavioral patterns of the human being have a natural connection among themselves: the philosophical act, the religious act, the artistic act, and the special relationship with the world that comes into play with the existential disturbance of love or death. Plato, as most of us know, thought about philosophy and love in similar terms… On the basis of their common orientation toward the “wonderful” (the mirandum —something not to be found in the world of work!) — on this basis, then, of the common transcending-power, the philosophical act is related to the “wonderful,” is in fact more closely related to it than to the exact, special sciences…

If it is the case that all sciences reduce to physics, it is not the case that the liberal arts —as opposed to the servile arts— must do so as well. To what, then, do they reduce? Surely they are not mystical exceptions to reductive scientific materialism! But what epistemological framework can account for or justify for the value of wonder, not as a consumed, expressed, posted emotional state but as a contemplative response to the irreducible? Indeed, can we even accept the possibility of irreducibility? No: all arts must cease to be liberal, must be made servile; this is the role of culture today: it serves ends.

The contemplation of wonder is a posture which is not inclined towards action; it is a stance of silent, self-effacing appreciation, not self-aggrandizing use. Thus, wonder is in a sense useless, but is the source of poetry and philosophy alike (and perhaps much more, perhaps even love); it can only grow within leisure, which we are laboring to eliminate.

(via mills)