World as a White Rabbit
--Book report on Sophie’s World
What if the world where you exist was just a dream? What if your external reality was just made of sound waves or of paper and writing, which means so far what you have seen, what you have heard, what you have thought and everything about you and you, yourself, were thoughts? Have you ever, through your whole 20-year-old life, even for a second, wondered and pondered that who you are or where the world came from?
These are what lie before Sophie, a 14-year-old girl living in Norway and also in the book Sophie’s World.
Sophie Amundsen lives in the year 1990 with her mother as well as her various pets. Her father, a captain of an oil tanker, is away for most of the year. The book begins with Sophie receiving two anonymous messages in her mailbox--the first asking, "Who are you?” while the second asking, “Where does the world come from?” By receiving papers continuously, Sophie starts her correspondence course in philosophy, determining to stay curious instead of being “crawling deep into the rabbit’s fur”, under a fifty-year-old philosopher, Alberto Knox’s guidance. Sophie gains a substantive and understandable review of history of philosophy. Meanwhile, various philosophical questions and methods of reasoning are put before Sophie, and also in front of readers.
The word “sophie” means wisdom. Thus, Sophie’s world can be regarded as a world full of wisdom. Plus, that is what philosophy actually means. As a combination of academy and art, this book reveals almost the whole development of philosophy through plain and understandable languages and familiar and intriguing style. Jostein Gaarder is an excellent writer as well as an intelligent philosopher and a brilliant teacher. I considered philosophy as dull and dreary and distant to us not until I read this book. With his guiding, I was totally involved in Sophie’s fascinating philosophy world: I come back to the ancient Greek, witnessing Socrates’s...