Good question jomifl. I think we respond to the world around us in a complex range of ways. We might like to think we can be purely rational, and a lot of the way we work does depend on scientific method especially since Newton: we do this, it works, we'll go on doing it if we want the same thing to happen. But we also apply other filters to experience: a sense of wonder, imagination, poetry, aesthetics and the idea of beauty, a sense of right and wrong, even the simple question "is this all there is?".
I love the curious position of the human race: I can encompass the whole universe in this little mind, yet still "there are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."