Curiosity goes to show,
What we really want to know;
It helps us in our daily life,
It helps us when we have a wife,
It helps us in our times of strife,
Which shows us what faith bestows.
The poet Justin Reamer penned this final stanza of “Curiosity” after asking:
“What does one feel when he is curious? What does he feel when he thinks? What does she look at when she blinks?
Curiosity is a life force. As long as we sustain it, curiosity can inspire awe and drive joyful mental musings and meanderings.
“Wow,” exclaimed my two-and-a-half-year-old grandson when he spied a live pumper truck while eating his favorite blueberry pancakes at an outdoor cafe in San Diego. “I never saw a real one before, only the ones in my truck book!” He wanted to know everything. “What’s it pumping? Can I go close? Can I touch it?” My daughter and I sat with cringing noses, glad for the road that separated us from the porta-potty-emptying pumper across the way. Lovingly, his devoted grandfather lifted him up and the two strode over for a close-up study.
I wondered when the last time was that my entire body shook with excitement, as his did. I realized that although I no longer zing when my curiosity catapults me into new worlds, I continue to relish the pleasure I feel when I’m in the wonderment zone. For me, curiosity romps transport me into a state of flow. Time and worries fall away. Writing about curiosity, for example, or writing about anything at all is transcendent and heavenly.
So what’s happened to curiosity in this search engine, AI-driven world?
Sadly, it’s short-circuited, according to the neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff, who studies curiosity and shared her concerns in a New York Times opinion piece. Until AI began to answer our googled questions, we’d scroll, open links relevant to our questions, journey far afield when something tickled our fancy, go to the library to read journal articles and other primary sources or go outside. By leaving our devices at home rather than relying on AI to summarize the night sky, we used to look at the stars, moon and setting sun, honing our observational prowess and three-dimensional sense of pleasure.
Good scientists make discoveries by veering from the planned course, starting with a hypothesis to prove and pivoting when it is disproved to explore uncharted territory.
Here are a few famous examples:
From believing that stress and spicy food caused stomach ulcers, scientists discovered that the true culprit is a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori.
From believing the Earth is the center of the universe, astronomers looked through Galileo’s telescope and turned to Kepler’s calculations to discover that the Earth orbits the Sun.
From believing that humans are born without innate mental content as blank slates, according to John Locke’s 1689 theory, to discovering that genes play a big role in pre-wiring human brains with traits and characteristics galore.
Imagine if early astronomers, medical researchers and philosophers used modern-day AI technology and limited their studies to the automatic answers that pop up in search engines. They’d have wrongly maintained that stress causes ulcers, the Earth is truly the center of the universe and babies’ brains are blank.
So what happens to our children’s minds and our wish to sustain curiosity through our lifetimes if it’s short-circuited by too-ready answers? Is there anything wrong with quickly getting a reliable answer? “There is,” says Le Cunff. “By shortening the time between asking a question and getting an answer, these tools are actually undermining curiosity — and paradoxically threatening our ability to understand the world.”
What can we do?
Normalize not knowing. Quell the desire for ready answers.
Don’t accept what you read at face value. Look for more information. Turn to other sources.
Keep a curiosity log with “I wonder why” questions.
Send me an email, and let me know how you keep buzzing with curiosity.
Patricia Steckler (pattisteckler@gmail.com) is a retired psychologist who was in private practice for 40 years. She lives in Bethesda and is a 2019 graduate of the Johns Hopkins science writing master’s degree program.
