I’m not sure whether I was a curious child. I have better memories of hiding under the kitchen table, sitting in a tree in the woods or hunkering in the closet for a nap than I do of peppering the adults around me with questions. And there are no stories told, in that way that we rely on the stories others tell to help construct and refine our memories, of my having had any particularly noteworthy tendencies toward curiosity. I suppose if I were truly curious about the answer to that question, I could ask. I haven’t.
And maybe it isn’t that I’m not curious to know but more that I’d rather not learn that I wasn’t curious when I’d rather harbor the the hope that I was and that nobody thought to tell those stories.
For what it’s worth, I did start more than my share of fires as a child, burning random collections of things on the flat roof of a church not far from that tree I used to sit in, which Ian Leslie notes is a potential indicator, explaining that “high diversive curiosity is counted as a risk factor for drug addiction and arson; experts say that one of the reasons children start fires is that they are overwhelmed by curiosity to see what something looks like when it is set alight.”
It could be true. Even as an adult, with what I would consider a reasonably decent level of curiosity and desire for knowledge, I don’t exercise curiosity by way of articulating questions so much as just going after the answers. I wouldn’t have asked how quickly the pink tissue-like paper we scavenged form the dumpster behind the office supply store would burn. I would have just told my friend Ginny to hold it still while I lit the corner.
In his book, Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It, Leslie expounds on the difference between diversive curiosity — that which “makes us want to know what lies on the other side of the mountain” — and epistemic curiosity — the type that affords us the “knowledge we need to survive when we get there.”
Diversive curiosity is common in children. Leslie cites the work of psychologist Michelle Chouinard, who asserted that children asked more than a hundred questions an hour. She concluded that asking questions is not the occasional occupation of a child, but that it is “a central part of what it means to be a child.”
Chouinard observed that as children mature, the nature of their questions changes: they no longer seek mere information (what and where) but begin to seek explanations (how and why). This is where curiosity moves from diversive to epistemic, and at this point, it’s estimated by Harvard professor Paul Harris that between ages two and five, kids ask in the range of 40,000 explanatory questions. Such frequency, he believes, “shows that questioning is an incredibly important engine for cognitive development.”
Leslie notes that questions are a “technology that children use to travel for insights.” The key, he explains, to keeping that curiosity alive as we mature and begin to believe that we have acquired all the information we need to get by, is to keep ourselves in what he calls the “curiosity zone.” Leslie cites research that suggests that if we know absolutely nothing about a subject, we are unlikely to develop a curiosity about it, because it’s just too overwhelming to think about. But if we already know a lot, we are also less inclined to learn more. So the sweet spot is that delicate space you’ll find “next door to what you already know, just before you feel you know too much.”
Confidence and security can be another factor in locating that sweet spot. “Fear kills curiosity,” Leslie explains, finding that children who experience “profound physical or emotional uncertainty” expend all of their cognitive resources on survival, leaving little leftover for playful exploration. At the same time, he notes that curiosity does require “an edge of uncertainty to thrive.” Feeling too comfortable, or overconfident, can drain any motivation to exercise curiosity.
I haven’t played with fire in a good 35 years, and managed to put whatever curious energies I do possess to better use before they turned me into an actual arsonist. I don’t know that it was fear that killed my curiosity toward the flame as much as having reached the end of what I wanted to know about it. A person would have to think that of those 40,000 questions there would be another one or two worth pursuing.
* * *
We’re reading Ian Leslie’s Curious together. Are you reading along? Perhaps you would share your thoughts in the comments. Do you consider yourself to be a curious person? What kinds of things make you curious? What kinds of things make your curiosity wane?
We’ll be reading reading together on the following schedule:
February 22 – Part One: How Curiosity Works
March 1 – Part Two: The Curiosity Divide
March 8 – Part Three: Staying Curious
Buy Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It now
Browse more book clubs
Browse our “Incidentally” series
Photo by Magdalena Roeseler, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by LW Lindquist.
- Earth Song Poem Featured on The Slowdown!—Birds in Home Depot - February 7, 2023
- The Rapping in the Attic—Happy Holidays Fun Video! - December 21, 2022
- Video: Earth Song: A Nature Poems Experience—Enchanting! - December 6, 2022
Rick Maxson says
This book is fascinating the way it explores curiosity. Interesting to me is the idea that fear kills curiosity. Fear kills creativity for one (an offshoot of curiosity I would think), but it is a type of fear and a degree of fear that does this. Coming from a extremely disciplined and restricted childhood, every attempt to explore and/or act in the realm of curiosity I was thwarted. This only made me more curious as to why my curiosity angered my parents and teachers.
I have half the book to go, but I tend to disagree at this point that one can know too much about something and thus dampen curiosity. I haven’t met anything yet that does not support the adage, the more you know the more you realize how much you don’t know. Is Leslie talking about things that have reached the point of muscle memory or rote knowledge like how to write cursive?
Maybe it is the manner in which we think we know things or understand something. Leslie’s statement on graduating from childhood curiosity to the “how and why” level is important. It keeps us from being superficial, from accepting statements or ideas that do not really ground us in reality or inform us that we are now exploring or exercising curiosity in fantasy or flights of imagination not meant to be grounded in the reality of every day life.
In my life I have gotten into so much trouble and taken so many chances that as an adult in the last quarter of my life here I often am both terrified at what might have gone wrong and thankful for having had the experiences despite their foolishness.
I love this book!
Will Willingham says
Rick, I agree with you that knowledge begets curiosity. I was trying to figure out how much knowledge he thinks is “too much.” But I am with him that knowing *nothing* can keep me from being curious because it keeps me from knowing where to even start.
So interesting that the restrictions on your curiosity caused it to grow. I wonder what might have happened if you had been freer to begin with.
Rick Maxson says
I don’t recall being taught in school that what I was learning was a sampling only. Schools and colleges seem to foster the belief that they are similar to a user manual, with parts that go together in 4, 6, 8 years to produce a knowledge machine that can be used as a final product. It should be stressed that a degree is part of a commencement to life, merely the fuel or primer to the goal of curiosity. Even engineering and medicine, things we think of as “sets” of finished products, are not that at all.
I used to wonder what it would have been like to have been less restricted, but at some point in my life it became moot. Who’s to say I might have not valued my free time as much if it was not so surreptitiously acquired .
Donna Falcone says
What I thought he meant was a loss of desire for the conquest, which happens, I think, when the motivation for learning a thing is to learn that thing and then it becomes boring because it’s been done now. Well, that doesn’t always last forever though, and it’s common to then go back to that conquered thing and realize there are things never noticed before – and so curiosity can be refreshed. I have seen this in artistic quests – what stands out most is what I observed in my son. He went into a long pause from his music because, well, artists take long pauses from things. What he had said was that he didn’t feel driven like he used to. He longed for the almost neurotic drive to sit in his room and practice his guitar until his friends came and dragged him out. HE LONGED for it… but he had cracked the code and he became, for lack of a better word, bored. What I think happened was he had exhausted himself on this particular “thing,” draining the well. He needed to step away and explore the world some more, figure out more about himself, and allow his well to be replenished… and then… the fiend returned. He became, once more, insatiable in his desire to push himself and his art.
So… I’m not sure if that’s what the author meant, but that;s where my mind went. I wonder if this is related to personality styles… or if it is the nature of the “thing,” is in right brain or left brain dominant?
Rick, that is fascinating what you say about the user’s manual approach to many learning programs that we see these days. I think the accountability craze has done a lot of damage. When outcomes based teaching and standardized curriculum’s evolved over time, deep learning goals and methods took a hit, at both the college level AND the elementary/high school levels.
SimplyDarlenw says
Good night, Irene! Your mention of dumpster diving reminded me of a childhood snow day.
My mom couldn’t take the day off work to stay home with us girls (we were probably age 10 & 8), and her usual go-to babysitter wasn’t available so she dropped us at a friend’s house — because we’d be safer from where our curiosity might lead us? That night when we were all back home and gathered around the dinner table, my sis and I presented my mom with a mostly burned pillar candle, I think it was pink. Its sides were dented through to a white interior. We’d found the treasure in a big ole dumpster that we’d climbed into – after pulling each other (me, my sis, and our friend) over the rusty sides. In a near white-out snow storm, we dug and flung all manner of garbage and dunked our heads down when the snowplow drove by the dump yard. <– All that to say, I remember the confidence and security we felt in our dumpster diving unity. Strength in numbers and all that jive. Or, maybe it was boredom.
As usual you tell a fantastic tale all while weaving in book lessons and facts. Thank ye!
Will Willingham says
Darlene, exploring the dumpsters in my neighborhood was a weekly, if not daily, occurrence. There was a small strip mall and a car wash near my home that provided such great treasures. Mostly we went in search of soda bottles to return for a nickle or dime, but then there was the day I found the old manual typewriter I later brought to college with me…
Rick Maxson says
Dumpster diving is divine. We also used to go peeping into the old garages in the alleys. It’s a shame new cities don’t have alleys anymore for the utility vehicles. We always thought they were for our bike rides.
Wow, Darlene, a typewriter is a real find.
Will Willingham says
I furnished my college house almost solely by ‘alley shopping,’ Rick. Alleys are the best.
Paul Willingham says
I am not reading the book with you all. I am happy when LW does one of these book club things, though. We learn another interesting fact or two about what was being done when no one was looking. And on a church roof yet!!
I am not sure that LW and two siblings asked 40,000 questions between the three of them (who’s counting, anyway?). I don’t know if we parents suppressed curiosity or maybe the trio were born with a special gift of quiet curiosity. We did have a set of World Book Encycopedias (without which we would have been branded as poster children for the Parental Hall of Shame) and they were encouraged to find answers there or through other sources.
Perhaps they just knew intuitively that there were better sources for the answers than dad and mom. And two them were debaters in high school which requires both asking, answering, listening and preparing questions and answers to be successful.
I am looking forward to additional confessions.
Dad
Will Willingham says
Do you remember that church at the bottom of the hill on Emerson? There was a stairway up to a first-floor flat roof that was a great place to hang out. And light a few matches.
(I will admit I did lay awake a night or two worried we hadn’t gotten everything extinguished, so at least I was not without conscience about the whole thing. 😉 )
Paul Willingham says
We knew which church you were talking about. When the City of Richfield redeveloped that area and put in the Shops at Lyndale, they actually took the land that the church was on and swapped it for another parcel and the congregation got a new building out of it. I’m not sure of the exact relationship bu the pastor of that church, while we were in business in Milbank, had relatives that went to coffee with your mom. If you think about it, you can ask her. She may remember what it was.
Dad
Bethany R. says
Such an interesting distinction in the way you pursue understanding, LW: ” I don’t exercise curiosity by way of articulating questions so much as just going after the answers.”
This stood out to me: “So the sweet spot is that delicate space you’ll find ‘next door to what you already know, just before you feel you know too much.’”
Richard, I see that tension between this quote, and what you mentioned above—that the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. It seems reasonable that that conclusion would lead to further seeking. I think you’re on to something as far as the topics/types of knowlege we want to quench. Perhaps too, the more deeply connected you are to the subject, the more likely you are to continue digging down another layer.
I also wonder how maturity plays a role, and how this rolls over into relationships. I could see younger folks feeling more quickly satiated with other people and mistakenly thinking “they know all there is to know” about their significant other. I’m thinking back to middle school when some tweens were “going out,” celebrating their two-week anniversary, breaking up after Tolo, finding another, repeat. Makes me wonder, how does the role of mystery/curiosity/discovery change or stay the same in short-term versus long-term relationships.
Will Willingham says
Bethany, I love that you included mystery in your comment, and was totally fascinated by what Leslie had to say about the way that we feel better about mystery. That kind of flies in the face of what we tend to think about our wishing for certainty. But the research suggests we actually want the mystery. I take that to mean we don’t want answers to all the questions, and we want to have something new to discover.
And I agree, I think maturity plays a role here. Our curiosity takes on a different form at different ages.
Rick Maxson says
I think the key to generating mystery is to push past the plateaus we reach in a search for more knowledge. There is a tendency to reach a stage where we think, “I know what I like and I like what I know, so why do something different?”
Certainty is like home base, from there you sally forth into the unknown. Some of us need more certainty than others and that’s OK. But I think we were meant to be adventurers and explorers. Otherwise we wouldn’t have made to where we are today.
There are two books I have kept and reread and repurchased over 30 or so years that speak in different ways about humans and their quest for what lies outside what we know: “The Discoverers” by Daniel Boorstin and “The Phenomenon of Man” by Pere Teilhard de Chardin—if you’re curious later on. 🙂
Will Willingham says
Thanks for the suggestions, Rick. I’ll check them out.
L.L. Barkat says
We are all very glad you settled into solving fire mysteries instead of causing them 😉
In this section of the book, I was most taken with a few things I already sort of knew, but found more info on…
1. “subjects who made a lifelong habit of reading and writing slowed their rate of mental decline by a third compared to those who did only an average amount of those things.”
I’m guessing that Internet skimming doesn’t count. And he addresses this in a way, in his discussion of the difference between diversive and epistemic curiosity. At some point in my Internet Life, I realized I was feeling too scattered, so I started taking full days off from online life to read instead. I won’t turn back from this decision. It’s been so life-giving. And it sounds like my long-term brain health depends upon it, too 🙂
2. regarding epistemic curiosity (“a directed attempt to build understanding” and “skills come from struggle”), I think too many writers don’t do this. And this is why they don’t improve. Becoming a better writer is about SO much more than status-quo-butt-in-chair-daily.
3. LOVED the stuff about babies and children using questions, especially the less obvious ways like pointing, or simply repeating what someone else says (hmmm, I think I do the latter; I guess I never shed this child-approved method of furthering conversations 😉 ). I really, really wish I had known about these dynamics when I was a mother to young children. I believe it would have upped my patience quota in the face of 80,000 questions (2 children x 40,000 questions = one very blitzed mama).
Thanks for leading us in this fascinating look at curiosity! 🙂
Will Willingham says
this idea of direction is useful to me, too. I mean, I am sure there is also value in just following wherever one’s curiosity takes a person, but in terms of really building depth, having that curiosity go in a particular direction seems necessary to me.
In much of my work, end up being more of a generalist. I mean, I know stuff about plumbing, construction, the law, medicine, finances, and more. But I am not ever going to go super deep into any of them because I hire the field experts when I need them. But the wide variety is a lot of what makes my work interesting to me. Choosing to go in a certain direction for a sustained period takes discipline on my part.
Sandra Heska King says
Laura said what I was going to about the settling into solving fires–although I seem to remember some instances of flaming kitchens…
I don’t know if I’d be called a curious child. I don’t remember asking a lot of whys. But I did read a lot–including Funk and Wagnall’s encyclopedia as each volume arrived. More and more I realize how much I don’t know. I was recently encouraged to set aside three hours a day as a reading priority. Three hours! I was trying to fit it in around other things. I was like–I can do that? It’s okay to let something else go?
I liked reading about Lloyd in the introduction who didn’t go into therapy when he fell into a depression. He went for walks. And started reading again and followed squirrels. The more he learned, the more he wanted to learn. And then he was mad to find out that nobody had told him the secret that, “If you’re paying attention, everything in the world–from the nature of gravity, to a pigeon’s head, to a blade of grass–is extraordinary.”
Then there was this: “The true beauty of learning stuff, including apparently useless stuff, is that it takes us out of ourselves. . . ” I never did quite get the guy who wanted to learn all those languages, though there was the idea of not trying so hard to learn how to speak German but to simply live it. And how all the languages in his head started to talk to each other.
And then there was Leonardo da Vinci’s to-do list and all that stuff about storytelling and the fact that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels sell fewer copies than Agatha Christie’s but are more satisfying. That “truly ambitious artists are more interested in mysteries than puzzles.”
Will Willingham says
As much as I love being able to google, I sometimes miss the encyclopedia set. It’s like they were the final authority on everything (even though, in reality, they barely scratched the surface of a tiny fraction of available topics).
I loved Leo’s to-do list.
Kelly Chripczuk says
Well, now I want to see if our library has this book – I’m very interested in the idea of curiosity as a posture, much like faith. I’m preaching this Sunday and one of the things I plan to ask the congregation about the text is “What are you curious about?” To me, there’s an inherent playfulness in curiosity that helps open us to surprising outcomes.
Will Willingham says
Kelly, glad to have you here. 🙂 I think you are right about that, curiosity at its best does have a playfulness at its heart. And your question is its own kind of curiosity. 🙂
Donna Falcone says
I don’t consider myself to have been an outwardly curious child, but inwardly I was always wondering, filled with a million secret whys.
I was so happy that Leslie discusses those who are curious about people and emotions – that was my thing. Still is. There are so many layers to every interaction and I sometimes want to peel every one back (although, over time I’ve learned how exhausting this peeling back can be).
For example, I don’t follow a hockey game the one might expect. I’m following plays and scores pretty well up until the first fight breaks out. After the gloves came off and the fight ensued and the gloves went back on, that was all I could think about – what happened? Why? Is so and so okay? Will he attack what’s his number again? Same thing on the baseball field – I would easily lose track of my kids’ plays and scores because I’d be mesmerized by the two young players squatting down in the outfield picking up clovers or bugs or whatever and deep in conversation. I am insatiably curious about why people do what they do and how people feel.
Donna Falcone says
Oh.. and how things work. I’m curious about that, too. I think that they’re kind of related – I mean, curiosity about how people work, and how “things” work.
Will Willingham says
I think being curious about people, and how they work, is one of the best kinds of curiosity. 🙂