On curiosity, questions and the human mind
My wife and I often spend time sitting in coffee shops, enjoying a coffee and chatting about whatever happens to come to mind. We also enjoy watching people, wondering who they are, where they've come from and what their stories might be. Occasionally, we'll invent a story of our own about someone who catches our attention, particularly if they look unusually happy, sad or preoccupied.
Today, I noticed someone dressed in a rather eccentric way. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the encounter, except that I immediately found myself wondering why.
Why had they chosen those particular clothes? Was it simply a matter of personal taste, a desire to be different, or perhaps something entirely unrelated to either?
I had no way of knowing, of course, and it was hardly any of my business. But that wasn't really the point. The observation had prompted a question, and the question had set my mind wandering.
I've always been inclined to ask why.
My mother used to say I was just being contrary. I suppose my endless childhood questions probably drove her crazy, particularly when the usual explanation of ‘that's just how it is’ failed to satisfy me.
Now, in the early part of my eighth decade, that curiosity shows no sign of diminishing. If anything, it's growing stronger. Perhaps that's because I have more time to pursue my interests, or because information on almost any subject is now so readily available.
Whatever the reason, sitting there with my coffee, I began thinking about a simple word that I believe is one of the most powerful in human language.
Why?
It's just three letters, yet it has an extraordinary capacity to open doors.
We ask what happened, when it happened and how it happened. These are useful questions, often essential to establishing facts. But asking why takes us somewhere deeper. It encourages us to look beyond what is immediately apparent and consider the motives, beliefs, circumstances and experiences that might explain what we observe.
And that led me to another thought. Isn't curiosity what enables us to ask why in the first place?
Curiosity and the Question
Curiosity and questioning seem inseparable. Curiosity encourages us to explore something we don't understand, while asking why gives that curiosity direction. And when we discover an answer, it frequently raises another question, which leads to another.
Consider Christmas.
For millions of people, Christmas is no longer primarily a religious occasion. It has become an important commercial event, yet people who hold no religious beliefs continue to celebrate it, sometimes with considerable enthusiasm.
Why?
We might explain it through tradition, family, childhood memories or the pleasure of gathering together. Christmas has become part of our cultural identity, regardless of whether we subscribe to the religious beliefs from which it emerged.
But that raises another question. Why do human beings attach such importance to traditions whose original meanings may no longer hold any significance for them?
Suddenly, we're no longer talking about Christmas. We're exploring the human need for belonging, continuity and shared experience.
Of course, not every question leads to a comfortable answer.
Why do people commit acts of cruelty in the name of religious beliefs that appear to condemn such behaviour? Religion alone cannot explain the contradiction. We need to consider identity, power, fear, loyalty, obedience and the extraordinary ability of human beings to justify their own actions.
Which raises yet another question. Why are we so adept at recognising contradictions in others, yet often reluctant to acknowledge them in ourselves?
There are entire branches of psychology devoted to understanding such behaviour, and even then the answers remain incomplete.
That's what I find so fascinating about asking why. The original question is often merely the beginning.
Are We Born Curious?
Thinking about curiosity brings me to John Locke and his concept of tabula rasa, the blank slate.
In his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1690, Locke challenged the idea that human beings are born possessing innate knowledge or principles. Instead, he argued that our knowledge develops through experience, through what we perceive with our senses and discover through reflection.
That naturally leads us towards the familiar debate about nature and nurture.
Are we born curious, or does curiosity develop through the environment in which we grow up?
Being born without acquired knowledge doesn't necessarily mean being born without the desire or capacity to acquire it. Research in developmental psychology suggests that the foundations of curiosity appear remarkably early. Infants respond to novelty, investigate unfamiliar objects and pay particular attention to events that don't conform to their expectations.
Long before children can formulate the question ‘why?’, they are already exploring how their surroundings work.
But what happens to that curiosity as they grow older?
Imagine two children, both naturally inquisitive.
One grows up in a home where questions are encouraged, books are available and adults are comfortable admitting they don't know something. The other grows up where questions are discouraged, authority is rarely challenged and conformity is rewarded.
It seems reasonable to suppose that their willingness to question the world might develop rather differently.
Of course, human development is rarely that simple. Temperament, inherited characteristics, education, culture and personal experiences all interact in ways that are difficult to disentangle.
Nevertheless, I wonder whether curiosity is something we are born with, while the habit of questioning is something we learn to cultivate.
And perhaps, in some circumstances, something we learn to suppress.
The Comfort of Certainty
Watch a young child exploring the world and you'll soon discover that almost everything invites a question.
Why is the sky blue? Why do birds fly? Why does the moon follow us when we walk?
The questions can seem endless, occasionally to the exhaustion of the adults expected to answer them.
Yet somewhere between childhood and adulthood, many of us appear to become less inclined to question what we are told.
We acquire knowledge, develop beliefs and establish ways of interpreting the world. These are necessary parts of growing up. We couldn't function if we had to reconsider every assumption each morning.
But there may be a price to pay.
As our understanding develops, we can become increasingly attached to it. What began as an explanation gradually becomes a conviction, and convictions can be remarkably resistant to challenge.
Perhaps this is where curiosity becomes something more than a desire to acquire information. It requires a willingness to entertain the possibility that what we think we know might be wrong.
That isn't always comfortable.
Throughout history, questioning established beliefs has brought people into conflict with religious, political and intellectual authorities. Yet much of human progress has depended upon precisely that willingness to question.
Socrates encouraged people to examine beliefs they had previously taken for granted. Scientific enquiry developed through observation, questioning and testing explanations against evidence. Our understanding of the natural world has repeatedly changed because someone was prepared to challenge an accepted account.
But asking questions doesn't automatically make us open-minded.
We can be intensely curious about information that supports our existing beliefs while remaining strangely indifferent to evidence that challenges them.
And when we find an explanation that makes sense to us, we're often inclined to accept it.
David Hume explored how our expectations develop through repeated experience, and how readily we infer connections between events. Yet observing a pattern doesn't necessarily establish why it occurs.
The distinction is particularly important when we attempt to explain human behaviour.
We see someone act in a particular way and begin constructing an explanation. Perhaps they were motivated by jealousy, ambition, fear or resentment. We draw upon our own experiences to make sense of what we've observed, sometimes with remarkably little evidence.
I wonder how often we mistake a satisfying explanation for a true one.
There is something reassuring about having an answer. Uncertainty can be uncomfortable, particularly when the subject concerns our identity, beliefs or understanding of the world.
Perhaps that's why curiosity needs to be accompanied by intellectual humility, a willingness to acknowledge that we might be mistaken and that someone who sees the world differently might have something worth teaching us.
The Desire to Know
All of which brings me to a question I hadn't considered when I began thinking about that little word.
Why are we curious in the first place?
Is curiosity primarily a desire to acquire knowledge, or is it a response to the discomfort of not knowing?
The two might seem much the same, but I think there's a subtle difference.
One suggests an appetite for discovery, a pleasure in exploring something new simply because it interests us. The other suggests a desire to resolve uncertainty, to replace something unexplained with an answer that restores our sense of understanding.
I suspect both are involved.
There are questions I pursue because the subject fascinates me, even though the answer has little practical consequence. Others arise because something doesn't make sense, and I find it difficult to leave the contradiction unexplored.
Perhaps that explains why my interests have always wandered across different subjects. History leads me towards philosophy, philosophy towards psychology, and psychology back towards the behaviour of people living in circumstances very different from my own.
The boundaries between these disciplines seem much less distinct when the purpose is simply to understand why people think and behave as they do.
And it's something that increasingly finds its way into my fiction.
Creating a character involves much more than deciding what that person will do. I want to understand why they might do it, what experiences have shaped their beliefs, what they fear, what they desire and what they might be unwilling to acknowledge about themselves.
Sometimes the most interesting question isn't why a character behaves as they do, but why they believe their behaviour is justified.
Which, when you think about it, is a question that extends well beyond fiction.
Never Stop Asking
I've arrived at no grand conclusion about curiosity, and perhaps that is entirely appropriate.
What began with a stranger in a coffee shop has led me through religion, human behaviour, childhood development, philosophy and the psychology of belief. And I suspect there are many more questions waiting to be explored.
I never did discover why that person had chosen to dress as they did. Nor did I particularly need to. Their appearance had simply caught my attention and prompted a question.
Perhaps curiosity is partly innate and partly cultivated. Perhaps it reflects both our pleasure in discovery and our discomfort with uncertainty. Whatever its origins, I think it deserves to be nurtured throughout our lives.
We need knowledge to make sense of the world, but we also need the willingness to question that knowledge, particularly when it begins to harden into certainty.
I don't suppose I'll ever stop asking why. Nor would I particularly want to. After all, a passing observation over a cup of coffee has just taken me on a rather unexpected intellectual journey.
And perhaps that's the greatest pleasure of curiosity. You never quite know where the next question might lead.