From Aristotle to St. Paul, or how rational thought and religion battled over knowledge.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cThe important thing is not to stop questioning\u2026 Never lose holy curiosity,\u201d Albert Einstein<\/a> counseled in 1955. Iconic science fiction writer Isaac Asimov has hailed curiosity as the key to discovery<\/a>. Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of the greatest scientific minds of our time, has proclaimed it central to our DNA<\/a>. And yet curiosity hasn\u2019t always enjoyed such ample cultural endorsement \u2014 in 1605, for instance, even the father of the scientific method admonished against its dark side<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n In Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything<\/b><\/a> (public library<\/a>), British writer Philip Ball<\/b> traces the cultural history of curiosity across its rollercoaster of popular favor:<\/i><\/p>\n It has always been a complaint leveled at curiosity that it is the enemy of productivity, an unwelcome distraction from our daily duties. Meanwhile, the Enlightenment\u2019s mockers of curiosity were \u2026 often not utilitarian Gradgrinds but gossipy, solipsistic wits and libertines. And a surfeit of information has always given cause for grumbling. Alexander Pope felt that the printing press, \u2018a scourge for the sins of the learned,\u2019 would lead to \u2018a deluge of Authors [that] covered the land.\u2019 \u2026 But it is clear that the first \u2018professors of curiosity\u2019 who flourished in the century of Pope\u2019s birth had to work tremendously hard to get their knowledge, and curiosity was, before profit or fame or reputation, their most significant motivation.<\/i><\/p>\n Among Ball\u2019s most fascinating observations is the contrast between curiosity and wonder, a tension arguably reconciled in the eloquent definition of science as \u201csystematic wonder\u201d<\/a> but an enduring tension nonetheless:<\/i><\/p>\n For the Greeks, curiosity was not even a clearly articulated concept. To the extent that it was acknowledged at all, it stands in contrast to its mercurial sibling, wonder. Aristotle believed that all humans naturally desire knowledge, but he felt that curiosity (periergia) had little role to play in philosophy. It was a kind of aimless, witless tendency to pry into things that didn\u2019t concern us. Wonder (thauma) was far more significant, the true root of enquiry: \u2018It is owing to their wonder,\u2019 he wrote, \u2018that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize.\u2019 \u2026 Until the seventeenth century, wonder was esteemed while curiosity was reviled.<\/i><\/p>\n In his popular emblem book Iconologia (1593) showing classical personifications of the human qualities, the Italian author Cesare Ripa depicted curiosity as a wild, disheveled woman, driving home the message in the caption: \u2018Curiosity is the unbridled desire of those who seek to know more than they should.\u2019<\/i><\/p>\n Though on the surface wonder might appear infused with the poetic energy of awe, there\u2019s also an element of docile faith to it, contrary to the active engagement of curiosity. In fact, Bell demonstrates how this very dichotomy grew central to Christian Scripture, where the extinguishing of curiosity \u2014 as Galileo learned the hard way<\/a> \u2014 became a mechanism of intellectual oppression, one necessary for preserving the \u201cwonder\u201d of faith:<\/i><\/p>\n That some knowledge was forbidden to humankind is of course central to the Christian Creation myth: this is the basis of the Fall. \u2018When you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God\u2019, the serpent tells Eve of the fruit on the tree of knowledge. The transgressive aspect of curiosity is an insistent theme in Christian theology. Time and again the student of the Bible is warned to respect the limits of enquiry and to be wary of too much learning. \u2018The secret things belong to the Lord our God\u2019, proclaims Deuteronomy. Solomon (if it was he who wrote Ecclesiastes) cautions that: <\/i><\/p>\n with much wisdom comes much sorrow; [\u2026]<\/i><\/p>\n Or, as the King James version has it: <\/i><\/p>\n Be not curious in unnecessary matters: St Paul was considered to have echoed this sentiment in the admonition \u2018Seek not to know high things.\u2019 The fact that he did not actually write this at all speaks volumes in itself, suggesting that the mistranslation fitted with prevailing prejudice. \u2026 \u2018Do not take pride in the arts or sciences,\u2019 wrote Thomas \u00e0 Kempis in the fifteenth century, \u2018rather, fear what has been told to you.\u2019<\/i><\/p>\n Wonder, on the other hand, had an element of unquestioning submission that resonated with the religious tradition:<\/i><\/p>\n The central problem with curiosity was that it was thought to be motivated by excessive pride. The accumulation of pointless learning ran the risk not that one would become another Lucifer but that one would primp and preen rather than bow one\u2019s head before the Lord. \u2018O curiosity! O vanity!\u2019, cried the late twelfth-century theologian Alexander Neckam. \u2018O vain curiosity! O curious vanity!\u2019<\/i><\/p>\n The imperative of pious humility was what commended wonder to Augustine at the same time as it indicted curiosity. There was nothing frivolous or hedonistic about wonder. It instilled awe, reminding us of our powerlessness and insignificance before the glory of God. That is why wonder in the face of nature\u2019s splendour was seen as the educated response, and a willingness to believe in marvels and prodigies was not only praiseworthy but virtually a religious duty. Curiosity, like scepticism, was a sign that you lacked devotion and faith.<\/i><\/p>\n The remainder of Curiosity<\/b><\/a> challenges common assumptions about the Scientific Revolution, exploring much like Vannevar Bush did<\/a> more than half a century ago, the evolving role of curiosity in the face of \u201cthe knee-trembling quantity of information we have at our fingertips\u201d through the lives and minds of such revered scientists as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton.<\/i><\/p>\n ___________________________<\/i><\/p>\n Brain Pickings<\/i><\/a><\/em> is the brain child of Maria Popova<\/a>, an interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large obsessed with combinatorial creativity who also writes for Wired<\/em> UK<\/a> and The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>, among others, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow. She has gotten occasional help from a handful of guest contributors<\/a>.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n
\nthe more grief.<\/i><\/p>\n
\nFor more things are shewed unto thee than men understand. <\/i><\/p>\n