In his book, The Trinity and the Kingdom, theologian Jürgen Moltmann contends:

In the pragmatic thinking of the modern world, knowing something always means dominating something: ‘Knowledge is power.’ Through our scientific knowledge we acquire power over objects and can appropriate them. . . . The motive that impels modern reason to know must be described as the desire to conquer and to dominate.

For the Greek philosophers and the Fathers of the church, knowing meant something different: it meant knowing in wonder. By knowing or perceiving one participates in the life of the other. Here knowing does not transform the counterpart into the property of the knower; the knower does not appropriate what he knows. On the contrary, he is transformed through sympathy, becoming a participator in what he perceives. Knowledge confers fellowship. That is why knowing, perception, only goes as far as love, sympathy and participation reach.

Moltmann pursues the idea of knowing in wonder toward a more respectful knowledge of the mystery which is the subject of his book: the Triune God. I suggest that knowing in wonder is also the respectful way to know a person, a people, the natural world, and life itself. I’m not sure modern thinking “always” understands knowing in terms of dominating and appropriating, but I believe mastery is too much our goal and categorizing too much our method of reduction and control.