Curiosity: Without It We’re Nowhere
By: Craig Axford
Tags: Creativity, Art, Science, Discovery, Curiosity

The argument Leonardo presented to his patron, the Duke of Milan, demonstrated keen self-awareness. The notion that procrastination, if used wisely, can facilitate creativity was no less counter-intuitive then than it is now. Taking one’s time is still widely believed to be an indication of indolence, though there is a growing body of evidence to the contrary.

Allowing curious people the space to do their thing and develop creative solutions to the problems that capture their attention remains easier said than done. Neither the Industrial Revolution or the Information Age have done much to foster patience with those wishing to take it slow and let ideas “marinate.” Institutions from business to religion almost universally prefer the efficiency of the punch-clock or the comfort of certainty to the unpredictability and messiness of unguided exploration for its own sake. The flexible hours and supposedly hands off approach of some Silicon Valley firms are exceptions that prove the rule.

Large segments of American culture are even signalling outright hostility toward curiosity and the creative efforts that spring from it. The current president is perhaps the least curious the United States has ever had. He practically wears his disdain for any reading material more than a page or two long as a badge of honor. In addition, the past several decades have seen art programs in public schools cut nearly to the bone, while science, math, and social studies are increasingly taught with standardized tests in mind. At this point the vast majority of students are learning what to think so they can do well on their SAT, not how to think so they can be good citizens with fulfilling lives.

The spirit of inquiry’s fall from grace has even been the source of some political hay making. In 2012, delegates to the Texas Republican Party State Convention approved a platform that probably won’t be going down in history as one of the more enlightened documents our species has ever produced. It read in part:

Knowledge-Based Education — We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

It’s true. Critical thinking does require a degree of skepticism when it comes to “fixed beliefs” and “authority,” be it parental or otherwise. Unfortunately, beliefs have never been “fixed,” and they never will be. As for “parental authority,” a parent is lucky if they can keep their kid on a leash much beyond the age of 12. Unfortunately for the Texas GOP, the amount of ink they would have to spill writing the bill that could possibly change this state of nature would fill the Lone Star State’s oil reserves many times over.

Of course, there are others out there seeking to engender a love of learning in our youth. Unfortunately, many of these people and the institutions they represent often signal their appreciation for it by monetizing it. Take, for example, the frequent use of bribery to get kids to read or bring home a good report card. Though we may sincerely believe otherwise, by materially incentivizing behaviors like reading we communicate that we don’t really think such habits are intrinsically rewarding. Money or other rewards, when offered to students, transform learning into just another job too unpleasant to do without expecting something tangible in return.

In What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, the philosopher Michael Sandel singles out these pay for learning schemes as particularly crass examples of our culture’s propensity to devalue even the highest human endeavors by commodifying them. It may be worth paying “underachieving kids to read books” in the hope that “we can teach them to love learning later.” However, Sandel concludes, “it is important to remember that it is bribery we are engaged in, a morally compromised practice that substitutes a lower norm (reading to make money) for a higher one (reading for the love of it).”

This commodification of curiosity has implications for research too. The first thing voters, policymakers, and investors frequently want to know these days is what the practical applications of any proposed research project will be. The US Congress, in its infinite wisdom, killed proposals to build the world’s largest superconducting super collider in Texas because the practical outcome of all that atom smashing was difficult, if not impossible, for scientists to articulate. As a result, the Higgs boson was confirmed in Europe, not the United States.

The premise behind the question of practical outcomes is that any research that isn’t going to lead to something useful — something that consumers will want and that someone can make a profit selling to them — probably isn’t worth either the public or private investment the effort will require. Unfortunately, we can’t know in advance where our curiosity will take us. Scientists researching one question often answer others that hadn’t even occurred to them when they started their work. But even if we could better determine in advance where our inquiries were leading us, the utility of a discovery is far from the only measure of its value. As often as not it enriches our lives just because it’s interesting. To my knowledge no one has gotten rich yet selling new planets found circling distant stars or describing an exotic insect previously unknown to science. But humanity is enriched by these discoveries none-the-less.

Curiosity doesn’t come without risk. There are an infinite number of ways to get it wrong and only a finite number of ways to get it right. Depending upon the question being investigated, the number of right answers can be as low as one. So it is understandable that the average person would be less predisposed toward curiosity than Leonardo da Vinci, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, or Rachel Carson. To keep ourselves and our societies chugging along most of us will limit our serious inquiries to only a few things we deem really important.

Marie Curie, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, and the only woman to win it twice: one in physics and a second in chemistry.

But we need to give the da Vincis, Curies, Einsteins, and Carsons of the world the space and resources they need to not just operate, but to flourish. Their work enriches life for the rest of us in ways we cannot even begin to measure. We should also each take just a little more time to explore questions that intrigue us personally, no matter how strange they may seem to everyone else. We’ve become addicted to the speed and easy answers of digital technology, and have been seduced by the siren song of efficiency. Our culture is increasingly servile and decreasingly spontaneous. We are, somewhat paradoxically, both comforted by routine and desperately craving entertainment.

Curiosity invites us to slow down and give our attention to something unknown, even if only to us. It transcends the memorized routines of work and passive distractions of the screen, inviting us to enter into a relationship with something new that has the potential of transforming itself into the understood and familiar. Remember, “to know is to love.”

But first we must take a trip to the library, spend some time in nature observing carefully its dynamic dance between the extreme limits of equilibrium, or just sit for a while allowing our ideas to marinate. That we now regularly place these activities on a spectrum that ranges from self-indulgent or eccentric to navel gazing exercises only academics and intellectuals can appreciate is an indication of just how much distance we have put between ourselves and these habits of mind. Wouldn’t we all be a little happier if we didn’t just stop to smell the roses now and then, but also spent a little time investigating how and why the roses smell?