The Thammasat University Library has acquired a new book that should be useful for students interested in history, psychology, neuroscience, and related subjects.
Why? What Makes Us Curious is by Mario Livio, an astrophysicist who was formerly employed at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, the United States of America.
The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of curiosity.
Trying to understand why we are curious and wish to explore the unknown turns out to be surprisingly complicated.
Some people will always click on links on Facebook and other social media to find out new information, while others are not tempted to do so.
As Dr. Livio puts it, a “perceived disparity between the existing and the desired informational condition [is]…the chief cause of curiosity.”
Another theory is that if we learn about something new that does not conform to our past understanding, we feel anxious and want to know more, so we become curious to resolve our feelings in a pleasant way.
Psychological testing has shown that research subjects are usually pleased to learn new things, as long as the learning process is neither too easy nor too difficult. Neuroscientists have discovered in experiments that that regions of the brain which focus on learning, reward, and memory are active when people feel curious.
When we feel curious due to surprise or discover something unexpected, parts of the brain that usually work during conflicts or when we feel hungry or thirsty are activated. However, when we learn new things, parts of the brain are activated that are usually associated with expectations of reward, like if a friend offers us a tasty snack or we have sat down to watch a much-anticipated new video.
Dr. Livio advises teachers that to make students feel pleasantly curiously about new information, they “should frequently ask questions, but they should not provide the answers right away. Instead, they should encourage their students to give the answer themselves, and then to think of ways to test the correctness of their answers.”
Here are some thoughts about curiosity by authors, most of whom are represented in the TU Library collection:
Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.
- Joseph Addison, The Spectator
Man in his universe is like a baby in a strange room. Just as a baby reaches out to finger or taste all the mysterious objects in the room, so man’s curiosity is excited by the wonderful sights, sounds, and smells that greet him whichever way he turns.
- Ginestra Giovene Amaldi, Our world and the universe that surrounds it (1966)
Curiosity, the overwhelming desire to know, is not characteristic of dead matter. Nor does it seem to be characteristic of some forms of living organism, which, for that very reason, we can scarcely bring ourselves to consider alive.
- Isaac Asimov
An understanding of the natural world and what’s in it is a source of not only a great curiosity but great fulfillment, but also in the long run, essential to our future survival.
- David Attenborough
God prepared hell, for those who are inquisitive about high things.
- Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Book XI, Chapter XII, quoting an unnamed author.
Curiosity, from its nature is a very active principle; it quickly runs over the greatest part of its objects, and soon exhausts the variety which is commonly to be met with in nature; the same things make frequent returns, and they return with less and less of any agreeable effect… The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is Curiosity. By curiosity, I mean whatever desire we have for, or whatever pleasure we take in, novelty… Those things, which engage us, merely by their novelty, cannot attach us for any length of time, curiosity is the most superficial of all affections; it changes its object perpetually, it has an appetite which is very sharp, but very easily satisfied; and it has always an appearance of giddiness, restlessness, and anxiety.
- Edmund Burke
I loathe that low vice—curiosity.
- Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto I, Stanza 23.
“Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English). “Now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!” (for when she looked down at her feet they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off).
- Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Ch. 2)
Curiosity endows the people who have it with a generosity in argument and a serenity in their own mode of life which springs from their cheerful willingness to let life take the form it will.
- Alistair Cooke
Creatures whose mainspring is curiosity will enjoy the accumulating of facts, far more than pausing at times to reflect on these facts.
- Clarence S. Day, This Simian World
So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.
- René Descartes, Discourse on the Method (1637)
The important thing is not to stop questioning; curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when contemplating the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of the mystery every day. The important thing is not to stop questioning; never lose a holy curiosity.
- Albert Einstein
The humanist has four leading characteristics – curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
- E. M. Forster
The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
- Anatole France
Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.
- Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 103 (12 March 1751)
The scientist is motivated primarily by curiosity and a desire for truth.
- Irving Langmuir
The basic drive behind real philosophy is curiosity about the world, not interest in the writings of philosophers. Each of us emerges from the preconsciousness of babyhood and simply finds himself here, in it, in the world. That experience alone astonishes some people. What is all this — what is the world? And what are we? From the beginning of humanity some have been under a compulsion to ask these questions, and have felt a craving for the answers. This is what is really meant by any such phrase as “mankind’s need for metaphysics.”
- Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher : A Journey Through Western Philosophy (1997)
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)