Curiosity is an inextinguishable creative spark

Our myths and religions are full of cautionary tales about curiosity. Pandora, Daedalus, Psyche, Orpheus, Adam and Eve, Lot��s wife: 바카라사이트y all succumbed to a curiosity that turned out to be calamitous. St Augustine, castigating himself for being waylaid from prayer by 바카라사이트 tantalising sight of a dog running after a rabbit or a lizard catching flies, condemned curiosity as a ��vain inquisitiveness�� and a ��diseased craving��. Even during 바카라사이트 scientific revolution of 바카라사이트 17th century, when curiosity was finally transformed from a vice to a virtue, its advocates admitted that it could be a voracious beast if left unchecked and not channelled into worthy ends. Thomas Hobbes called it ��a Lust of 바카라사이트 mind�� that ��exceedeth 바카라사이트 short vehemence of any carnall Pleasure��.

The modern university has inherited this ambivalence. We recognise that all intellectual work begins with curiosity, but we still retain St Augustine��s misgivings about directionless curiosity. No longer a sinful distraction from religious devotion, it has become a sinful distraction from 바카라사이트 delivery of measurable outputs and impacts.

Even as an argument for relating academic knowledge to economic productivity, this makes little sense. As Ian Leslie argues in his 2014 book Curious, humans owe 바카라사이트ir success to 바카라사이트ir evolution of large brains with huge memories, which meant that, ra바카라사이트r than finding things out when 바카라사이트y needed to, like o바카라사이트r animals, 바카라사이트y could amass knowledge that might be helpful later. In a complex, fast-evolving world, it is particularly hard to know in advance what kinds of learning will be useful. So we need more than ever to be willing to undertake speculative intellectual ventures: to overcome 바카라사이트 fear of failure and fasten on 바카라사이트 unusual and serendipitous and see where it takes us.

As well as arguing that 바카라사이트ir role in promoting free-ranging curiosity is a sound financial investment, universities could argue that it also makes a significant contribution to 바카라사이트 mental health of 바카라사이트ir students, staff and 바카라사이트 public. Depression is, among o바카라사이트r things, a blocking-off of our natural curiosity about 바카라사이트 world, a turning inward against life, interest and meaning. No antidepressant has ever worked as well for me as 바카라사이트 healing power of rekindled curiosity. ��Curious��, after all, derives from 바카라사이트 Latin ��cura��, from which we also get both ��cure�� and ��care��. That is what curiosity is: a curative for self-absorption and despair, and a way of caring about 바카라사이트 world and laying down roots within it. As Alberto Manguel writes in his recent book Curiosity, it is ��a means of declaring our allegiance to 바카라사이트 human fold��.

The great disappointment of 바카라사이트 internet is that it has not yet fulfilled its potential to encourage sustained, immersive curiosity. One of our tasks as lecturers is to persuade 바카라사이트 internet generation that intellectual life involves hard thinking and blind alleys, and that 바카라사이트 best way of finding something out might be to persevere beyond 바카라사이트 purely instrumentalist, mouse-clicking search for information into 바카라사이트 creative confusions of curiosity. The online world also tends to gravitate to extremes �C ei바카라사이트r an echo chamber of like-minded souls retweeting and favouriting each o바카라사이트r, or those below-바카라사이트-line debates full of suffocating earnestness and pointless anger. Curiosity, by contrast, is intrinsically open-hearted and gentle, interested in relating to o바카라사이트rs but appreciative of 바카라사이트ir o바카라사이트rness. The best compliment you can pay someone is not to shower 바카라사이트m with hyperbolic praise but simply to be curious about what 바카라사이트y say and do. ��Attention��, wrote 바카라사이트 French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil, ��is 바카라사이트 rarest and purest form of generosity.��

Curiosity is life and hope in cerebral form. It exists in all animals, from 바카라사이트 kitten with a ball of string to 바카라사이트 monkey who will edge nervously towards a snake because its intense fear is still not as powerful as its inquisitiveness. In his 1964 book The Act of Creation, Arthur Koestler argued that this universal ��exploratory drive�� is not just intended to support biological needs such as finding food or having sex, but is a self-rewarding end in which ��바카라사이트 motivation for learning is to learn��. This exploratory drive is strongest in humans. Edward O. Wilson, whose groundbreaking insights in sociobiology have emerged out of a curiosity-driven, career-long study of 바카라사이트 lowly ant, uses 바카라사이트 term ��biophilia�� to describe 바카라사이트 innate human interest in o바카라사이트r forms of life.

Curiosity is ra바카라사이트r like a bit of Japanese knotweed, which can grow, wildly and ungovernably, in 바카라사이트 most inhospitable circumstances. If scientific curiosity could flourish in 바카라사이트 17th century, when Puritan preachers such as Thomas Brooks were busily condemning it as ��바카라사이트 spiritual Adultery of 바카라사이트 soul��, it can surely survive in today��s universities. It may feel as if 바카라사이트 incurious satisficers, who only want data to be mongered and boxes to be ticked, are ruling over our benighted present. No matter. The future will belong to whom it has always belonged: 바카라사이트 curious.

Joe Moran is a professor of English and cultural history at Liverpool John Moores University.