How Curiosity Drives Us
Tracing curiosity to the prehistoric age
Children go through a stage of intense curiosity, sometimes asking over 400 questions a day. As a child, one of my most memorable questions was related to flying, and it has since become a lifelong passion of mine. Back in the day, when children were allowed to visit the cockpit, I asked the pilots: “If the Earth rotates, why can’t planes take off and wait until the Earth rotates to the right destination and land there?” Why not, indeed!
My own curiosity is what led me to explore science and engineering. It also drove me to study in four countries, which then exposed me to various cultures. On a personal development level, it’s also curiosity that helped me figure out tough challenges as a leader.
It’s no surprise that new research in psychology suggests that great leaders in all disciplines — not only scientists — are intensely curious beings.
But let’s start with a bit of history going back to the ages and understanding what role curiosity has played in science.
The first scientist
Have you ever wondered who the first scientist was? We often credit Aristotle as the first all-round scientist, even though the term scientist was coined two millennia after him. It was Cambridge University historian and philosopher William Whewell who used the term in 1834 to describe someone who
“studies the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.”
During my hunt to find out more about pioneering science, I became fascinated by the evolutionary ways that science was being used by mankind in the earlier ages.
For example, the prehistoric man used heat treatment on silcrete rock tools to flake them better. This was hardly a coincidence — it was a planned scientific approach “through observation and experiment”.
Science and the prehistoric man
Empiricism is when knowledge is attained through experience or experimentation. Francis Bacon is considered to be the father of this particular scientific method.
Imagine a scenario where a tribe forgot about their hunting tools around a fire overnight only to realize later that the heat would alter the silcrete material therefore making it easier to flake. A continuing curiosity would have more tribe members leaving their tools in the fire for different durations in an attempt to find the optimum treatment period for their tools. Like many accidental discoveries, this is how empirical data could have been used to improve and advance current technology during that time.
Why curiosity is behind science, engineering and technology
Just like the phrase, “Curiosity killed the cat,” this 16th century proverb warned of the dangers of further investigation and experimentation, but according to The Curiosity Gene (book by Alexandros Kourt in 2017), inquisitiveness has the opposite effect.
Curiosity is shown to be responsible for human survival and evolutionary advancement to become the most intelligent species on the planet. It is this curiosity gene that is perhaps what separates us from other species.
So whether we are referring to the prehistoric man, or pioneers like Aristotle, it is apparent that the desire to find practical solutions or to perfect processes is driven by natural curiosity.
How about you? Does being inquisitive equate to better life choices? When you reflect on your life to date, has your own curiosity ever been a major factor in your decision-making?
As Albert Einstein once said:
“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious”
