Edmund Burke once said, "The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity". Curiosity is a trait of inquisitiveness, it is a quality which makes us learn, explore, ask and investigate. And this trait is one of the few which develops in humans at a very early age. In fact, we get most of our knowledge because of our curiosity. A child learns his mother tongue only because of curiosity. This quality is what helps children learn at faster rates than adults. And this is the quality which has led us to explore things beyond what we see, hear or feel...
As children, we learn thousands of words and that too with perfection. We insert these words in our day-to-day language and gradually, they become an essential part of our language. But as it always happens with every language, when we are asked to define a particular word which we learnt in our childhood, we would not be able to define some of these words. Or even if we are able to define them, their definitions would have some words, whose definition again, we wouldn't be able to give, thus leading us to a loop where one word requires another word to define it, and it continues until the last word requires the very first word in its definition.
My point is, to define new words, we need some basic words whose definitions cannot be given. But there are many words in our vocabulary which we use very often, but still cannot give their definition. And that's how we learn our mother tongue. We listen to the words being spoken, and then we are 'curious' to know about them and use them. Curiosity is the reason why children ask so many questions when they gain awareness. But, as we move on towards our modern system of education (which I discussed in very detail in my previous post titled 'The Modern Education Scenario'); we start losing our inquisitiveness. We start accepting concepts as facts. We start assuming things to be true. And we start taking theories for granted.
But how does that happen?
We all have a pleasure centre in our brains. (Sounds like an amusement park, right? It is.) This centre lets us know if some action is pleasurable, and it generates the desire to perform the same action again. And this 'pleasure centre' is the centre for everything from laughter to drugs to sex... This centre is responsible for the titillating feelings we experience when we are having pleasure. And this centre is responsible for us wanting to do those things again...
And this is done via a chemical called 'dopamine'. Whenever we find ourselves in situations which are pleasurable, the pleasure centre of our brains releases this chemical. And we feel good. We feel a rush in our bodies. And that increases the secretion of this chemical, reminding us to do the activity again. Studies have shown that even a sip of beer is enough for the release of dopamine. And when we have an addiction, this is the bad guy which makes it challenging for us to stop.
When having sex, when taking drugs, when in addiction, this is the chemical which makes us do it all over again. So, when we see our partners again, when we see our objects of addiction again, this chemical reminds our brains about the last time, and makes us want to perform the activity again to have the 'pleasure' that we did before.
And interestingly, when we pursue new information through our curiosity, this chemical is secreted again. And that is why some people cannot control their curiosity - they would go to any lengths to satisfy their greed for information. That is why curiosity is often related with 'pleasure', because it gives us a unique kind of pleasure. It makes us feel satisfied, similar to sex and drugs. Research has shown that negative curiosity (i.e., uncontrolled curiosity) could lead to a new addiction - the addiction to find information. And no sooner does this addiction become an obsession, making us lose track of what is going on around us. That is why many scientists are often regarded as 'insane'. They are so curious to find answers that they become obsessed with this feeling, and soon, start getting detached from the world around them and enter a world in which they are satisfied - a world which they can control...
There is a common joke about Newton and his law of gravitation. If Newton discovered gravity when an apple fell on his head, what was he doing when his poop went down the toilet?
Did gravity not exist before an apple fell on his head? It did. Did the laws of gravitation not exist before this event? They did. Then why did he discover gravity only after this event? Because of his curiosity. Because, before an apple fell on his head, he had never given a thought to it. But since he was in a garden, and he was sitting idle (hard to believe though), and at that point, an apple fell on his head; he got curious why. If the apple would have fallen on the ground instead, maybe he wouldn't even have gotten curious. When the apple fell, and specifically, on his head, he had a reaction - there was an instant where he thought about this event, which led to him being curious. And that is interesting. Feelings get merged with curiosity. And that leads to questions, whose answers we are tempted to find out...
If it weren't for the curiosity of humans, we would still be living in the Stone Age. Man rubbed two rocks together, and it produced a spark. It was his curiosity that made him do that again to discover what it was that was produced. When he was successful in producing something called 'fire', he tried to put various things in it to check what it did. And this curious nature led him to 'cooking'. And there are many, many such instances - you wouldn't even be able to record such instances, because every single day, everyone of us has several such encounters with our curious sides. There have been many a discoveries and inventions which were accidental... William Kellogg accidentally invented the corn-flakes when he left boiled wheat to sit out for too long. Percy Spencer got the idea of a microwave oven, when microwaves in the laboratory melted a candy bar in his pocket. Alexander Fleming invented the penicillin after noticing a mysterious mould in one of his petri-dishes when he returned from a two-week long vacation. And Horace Wells got the idea of an anaesthetic when he witnessed a man under the influence of laughing gas who felt nothing despite having an injured leg during a demonstration.
All these seem to be so easy to catch up, and we may be wondering they were lucky, that if we were in their place, even we would have invented something. But no, chances are that we wouldn't have even stumbled upon the idea of thinking about such things. We would have thrown away the flaky wheat as 'badly cooked food', we would have paid more attention to our spoiled pants, we would have thrown away the petri-dishes as a 'bad experiment result', and we would have paid more attention to the man in the demonstration than the fact that he didn't feel the pain. (Maybe we would have been jealous to see him 'control' his pain)
All these inventions were accidents, that's true. But these accidents wouldn't have become inventions had it not been for the curiosity of these people. Curiosity works in mysterious ways. It forces us to search for answers in situations we never think about. When we hear a piece of gossip, it is our curiosity that makes us want more details. There is no person who'd say he/she is not interested in gossip. Because we are curious creatures. We want to know. And we 'need' to know. That is what keeps us informed and makes us think. (More about gossip in a future post.)
Curiosity is interesting - it can drive people insane, and it can drive people to answers. It can make people addicted and it can make them feel satisfied. But more than that, it has the power to do what no other human trait can do - it can enlighten the minds, cause revolutions and forever change the course of our destiny...
As children, we learn thousands of words and that too with perfection. We insert these words in our day-to-day language and gradually, they become an essential part of our language. But as it always happens with every language, when we are asked to define a particular word which we learnt in our childhood, we would not be able to define some of these words. Or even if we are able to define them, their definitions would have some words, whose definition again, we wouldn't be able to give, thus leading us to a loop where one word requires another word to define it, and it continues until the last word requires the very first word in its definition.
My point is, to define new words, we need some basic words whose definitions cannot be given. But there are many words in our vocabulary which we use very often, but still cannot give their definition. And that's how we learn our mother tongue. We listen to the words being spoken, and then we are 'curious' to know about them and use them. Curiosity is the reason why children ask so many questions when they gain awareness. But, as we move on towards our modern system of education (which I discussed in very detail in my previous post titled 'The Modern Education Scenario'); we start losing our inquisitiveness. We start accepting concepts as facts. We start assuming things to be true. And we start taking theories for granted.
But how does that happen?
We all have a pleasure centre in our brains. (Sounds like an amusement park, right? It is.) This centre lets us know if some action is pleasurable, and it generates the desire to perform the same action again. And this 'pleasure centre' is the centre for everything from laughter to drugs to sex... This centre is responsible for the titillating feelings we experience when we are having pleasure. And this centre is responsible for us wanting to do those things again...
And this is done via a chemical called 'dopamine'. Whenever we find ourselves in situations which are pleasurable, the pleasure centre of our brains releases this chemical. And we feel good. We feel a rush in our bodies. And that increases the secretion of this chemical, reminding us to do the activity again. Studies have shown that even a sip of beer is enough for the release of dopamine. And when we have an addiction, this is the bad guy which makes it challenging for us to stop.
When having sex, when taking drugs, when in addiction, this is the chemical which makes us do it all over again. So, when we see our partners again, when we see our objects of addiction again, this chemical reminds our brains about the last time, and makes us want to perform the activity again to have the 'pleasure' that we did before.
And interestingly, when we pursue new information through our curiosity, this chemical is secreted again. And that is why some people cannot control their curiosity - they would go to any lengths to satisfy their greed for information. That is why curiosity is often related with 'pleasure', because it gives us a unique kind of pleasure. It makes us feel satisfied, similar to sex and drugs. Research has shown that negative curiosity (i.e., uncontrolled curiosity) could lead to a new addiction - the addiction to find information. And no sooner does this addiction become an obsession, making us lose track of what is going on around us. That is why many scientists are often regarded as 'insane'. They are so curious to find answers that they become obsessed with this feeling, and soon, start getting detached from the world around them and enter a world in which they are satisfied - a world which they can control...
There is a common joke about Newton and his law of gravitation. If Newton discovered gravity when an apple fell on his head, what was he doing when his poop went down the toilet?
Did gravity not exist before an apple fell on his head? It did. Did the laws of gravitation not exist before this event? They did. Then why did he discover gravity only after this event? Because of his curiosity. Because, before an apple fell on his head, he had never given a thought to it. But since he was in a garden, and he was sitting idle (hard to believe though), and at that point, an apple fell on his head; he got curious why. If the apple would have fallen on the ground instead, maybe he wouldn't even have gotten curious. When the apple fell, and specifically, on his head, he had a reaction - there was an instant where he thought about this event, which led to him being curious. And that is interesting. Feelings get merged with curiosity. And that leads to questions, whose answers we are tempted to find out...
If it weren't for the curiosity of humans, we would still be living in the Stone Age. Man rubbed two rocks together, and it produced a spark. It was his curiosity that made him do that again to discover what it was that was produced. When he was successful in producing something called 'fire', he tried to put various things in it to check what it did. And this curious nature led him to 'cooking'. And there are many, many such instances - you wouldn't even be able to record such instances, because every single day, everyone of us has several such encounters with our curious sides. There have been many a discoveries and inventions which were accidental... William Kellogg accidentally invented the corn-flakes when he left boiled wheat to sit out for too long. Percy Spencer got the idea of a microwave oven, when microwaves in the laboratory melted a candy bar in his pocket. Alexander Fleming invented the penicillin after noticing a mysterious mould in one of his petri-dishes when he returned from a two-week long vacation. And Horace Wells got the idea of an anaesthetic when he witnessed a man under the influence of laughing gas who felt nothing despite having an injured leg during a demonstration.
All these seem to be so easy to catch up, and we may be wondering they were lucky, that if we were in their place, even we would have invented something. But no, chances are that we wouldn't have even stumbled upon the idea of thinking about such things. We would have thrown away the flaky wheat as 'badly cooked food', we would have paid more attention to our spoiled pants, we would have thrown away the petri-dishes as a 'bad experiment result', and we would have paid more attention to the man in the demonstration than the fact that he didn't feel the pain. (Maybe we would have been jealous to see him 'control' his pain)
All these inventions were accidents, that's true. But these accidents wouldn't have become inventions had it not been for the curiosity of these people. Curiosity works in mysterious ways. It forces us to search for answers in situations we never think about. When we hear a piece of gossip, it is our curiosity that makes us want more details. There is no person who'd say he/she is not interested in gossip. Because we are curious creatures. We want to know. And we 'need' to know. That is what keeps us informed and makes us think. (More about gossip in a future post.)
Curiosity is interesting - it can drive people insane, and it can drive people to answers. It can make people addicted and it can make them feel satisfied. But more than that, it has the power to do what no other human trait can do - it can enlighten the minds, cause revolutions and forever change the course of our destiny...
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