What Makes It Wonder-full?
Human beings love lists and categories ... they're a soothing way to make sense of the world. (All those enlightened brackets that we talked about last week are just another form of categorizing and grouping the world so that we can grasp it all.) If we compiled a list of our favorite lists, The Seven Wonders of the World would rank pretty high. There are actually quite a few of these "Seven Wonder" lists, ranging from Herodotus (of 300 fame), all the way to the list we most commonly use, from round about the 2nd century BC, which is attributed to the Greek engineer Philon of Byzantium (poor guy, if it was him, his heart was clearly not in catapults and sieges, but in travel writing). Now, remember, this list was created for Greeks, by Greeks ... a sort of tourist guide, so it only includes their must-sees of the Ancient World. There's no Great Wall, no Machu Picchu, not even the Colosseum made the original cut. The lack of relevance to the wonders of today's world made filmmaker Bernard Weber decide to compile a new list (you can hear him discuss it with Lynn Neary here), by committee. And he's not the only one ... Ohio, Illinois, and even Kansas City (where of course, barbecue is listed as a wonder-- de septem barbecue spactaculis?), are getting in on it. So here's the spot to make your new list ... the seven wonders of the modern world.
9:35 AM ET | 03-20-2007 | permalink
