According to Merriam Webster, curiosity is simply the desire to know and one that arouses interest especially for uncommon or exotic characteristics Tobacco was once regarded as a curiosity in Europe. : an unusual knickknack : curio The antique shop was full of curiosities. a curious trait or aspect.
Should one believe old wives tales, curiosity is responsible for wholesale cat slaughter but the current cat population is substantial enough to bring the veracity of that saying into question. And, the sheer volume of cat videos on Youtube certainly supports that notion.
IMHO, curiosity is the single most critical behavioral trait responsible for mankind's growth and development. Science itself is based upon curiosity - why do things react the way they do? Curiosity drives all of those scientific experiments. We have a nearly insatiable desire to learn - and that is a very good thing.
How can you look at a picture like this and not be curious?
Curiosity got us to the moon (with some serious mathematical help). Curiosity got the Mars Rover all the way to mars and curiosity got the voyager program going. Per NASA, the twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft are exploring where nothing from Earth has flown before. Continuing on their more-than-39-year journey since their 1977 launch, both Voyager spacecrafts carry a greeting to any form of life, should that be encountered. The message is carried by a phonograph record - -a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the divers Check out The Cabinet of Curiosities of life and culture on Earth. The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages.
Curiosity is fueled by many things, but a primary motivator has always been money. The desire to open up trade across the entire continent for economic reasons kick started the Lewis and Clark expedition. The desire to create the most bizarre - but tasty - fried food has motivated food vendors at fairs since time began. I personally draw the line at fried butter - even I have my limits. Fried ice cream, though, is perfectly acceptable.
Curiosity fuels fans of mysteries. One of my favorite series is the FBI Special Agent Pendergast books by Lincoln Preston and Douglas Child. Check out The Cabinet of Curiosities or check out the wide range of titles in the series here. I heartily recommend the series as an enjoyable read with quirky characters, wide ranging story lines and more than a few surprises.
I have always been a curious fellow. That has led me to being what is known as a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. That is the trait that allows me to sit down and write these little dittys pretty much off the top of my head. Over the years my mind has been a steel trap for useless (read trivia) information. I assure you it has saved me a fair amount of money in bars over the years. My friend Brian Scott and I form a virtually invincible Trivial Pursuit team - BS is a dentist and our skill sets are very complimentary. It does not hurt that BS is also one of the two or three most intelligent people I have ever known.
Curiosity has been crucial in our development and will continue to be - we need to guard against losing that spark inside us that drives us to learn.
That's it for this week's topic. See ya next week, same bat time, same bat channel for another installment of 2-on-1.
I think curiosity is not just the urge to know but also the urge to fill in the gaps in what we are told. I'm often curious about aspects of a news story that other people don't seem to have even thought about. For example, the Primark building in Belfast was burnt down recently, and the next door Tesco store was closed in case the Primark building collapsed onto it. My immediate question was what happened to all the food in Tesco. Was it left to rot? Was it removed and given to food banks or the homeless? Nobody else has even posed the question, let alone answered it.
ReplyDeleteAnd where was the photo taken? My googling suggests it might be Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah.
Yeah Nick - Bryce Canyon in Utah - an absolutely gorgeous place - even more spectacular than Carlsbad Caverns. I'd suggest if the food in TESCO was distributed to food banks that would have been made public just for the PR - interesting the question has not even been raised.
DeleteShack I found the golden record fascinating! have I only recently become 'curious and passionate?'
ReplyDeletealthough ever the critic... I wish they had been able to place the 'sounds' with the image of it. I imagined myself not knowing what the sound was and only going by what I heard and many of them made no sense at all and even were poor representations of the particular sound! but that we even tried at all is wonderful.
the individual 'greetings from earth's people' part is great!
Carl Sagan is/was one of my favorite people. thanks for this post.
and I love a jack of all trades! they are the guys I would follow into the woods and know that I might survive! :D
The thing about Voyager is it will go pretty much forever - LOL - so if it does get read/listened to how accurate will it be? Problem with jack of all trades comes at the end when they are poor as church mice - LOL it would have been nice to master something.
Delete"....curiosity is the single most critical behavioral trait responsible for mankind's growth and development." No greater truth on the matter has been ever said.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to the club. I too am a Jack of some trades and master of none. For many trades I depend on professionals.
Apart from money, curiosity has been a great motivator for philosophers and spiritual seekers too.
Great post Shackman. I enjoyed reading every line of it and patted myself on my back for having thought up the topic.
The more I read, this whole topic gets curiosier and curiosier, leaving me to think I'm in Wonderland!
ReplyDelete