What's Wrong with Curiosity?

“The craving for knowledge for its own sake and curiosity about a whole trove of abstract concepts have led to a rich and sophisticated human culture.”

Mario Livio, WHY

Curiosity is the Cinderella of intellectual culture — admired, yes, if well-dressed. Otherwise, it is not trusted enough when doing its disruptive work.

The term ‘curiosity’ is not as popular as today’s buzzwords like ‘innovation’ or ‘creativity’, despite the fact that curiosity is the spark that ignites any intellectual pursuit.?While ‘creativity’ is inspiring and ‘innovation’ is cool, curiosity is not always seen in a positive light, we all remember that “curiosity killed the cat”.

In German, for instance, the word for curiosity, Neugier, is translated as ‘greed for something new’.

The Century Dictionary explains that both the words ‘curious’ and ‘inquisitive’ may carry good or bad connotations, but ‘inquisitive’ is more often positive.

‘Curious’ expresses only the desire to know, while ‘inquisitive’ denotes the effort to learn by inquiry. According to an etymological dictionary, in the late 14th?century, ‘curiosity’ could be defined as “careful attention to detail” (a meaning now obsolete), as well as “skilled workmanship” and “a desire to know or learn, inquisitiveness.”

Why Does Schooling Kill Curiosity? It's Just Technical Reasons!

Any educator will tell you that children demonstrate different levels of curiosity, even in pre-school. Sadly, many children slowly but steadily lose their desire to explore the world around them. “Between the ages of 5 and 12, their curiosity diminishes”?writes research psychologist Susan Engel in her recent book, The Hungry Mind.

Some children, however, seem to have an unlimited desire to learn, and are literally ‘hungry’ for information of any kind. These children do not tolerate restrictions on their investigations, and this quality, having appeared quite early, continues to be their most distinctive feature at all ages.

Susan Engel’s own study showed how dramatically the number of curious questions drops when kids start school. She observed that many teachers feel pressured to cover material and therefore have "very specific objectives for each stretch of time"?and "put a great deal of effort into keeping children on task and reaching those objectives.”?This results in a classroom environment where curious questions are seen as a disturbance or distraction to the class as a whole.

I do believe that this is not being done on purpose, teachers feel forced to sacrifice fulfilling curiosity in favor of speed and efficiency. My sidenote: Alternative and progressive education methodologies can combat this difficulty, but formal education systems seem uninterested in them

This means that people who do not possess an innate yearning for discovery are being suppressed by the education system.

No wonder the main accusation of the progressive education movement in its resistance against “the system” was that standard teaching was killing both curiosity and the joy of learning, which, according to the research we have just seen, are probably one and the same thing. As Albert Einstein famously said:

"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

Curiosity in the World of Work

What's the situation with curiosity in the world of work? Is its position any better?Having curious employees might seem like the ultimate dream for any organization, but this is far from the case! Despite the noble statement by Basil Shikin in Forbes,

'When curious people examine how things work, they’re likely to not only find the problem but also solve it, because of how much energy they’ve focused on satisfying their quest for answers,'

companies do not primarily seek out curious candidates.

In a 2015 PwC survey, thousands of CEOs named "curiosity" and "open-mindedness" as leadership traits that are becoming increasingly critical in demanding times. However, the first broad overview of the impact of curiosity on the world of work, MERCK’s 2016 State of Curiosity Report, showed that only 20% of the 3,000 employees surveyed described themselves as curious, with those with particularly high curiosity scores bringing qualities such as self-organization, teamwork, and detail orientation - character traits that are vital for high performance. 80% of respondents felt that curious colleagues were most likely to put an idea into action in the workplace.

The decrease in overall curiosity during schooling leads not only to a lack of curiosity in adults, but even an active discouragement of it. Todd Cashdan, a professor at George Mason University, surveyed 3,000 people in the United States, China, and Germany: although 65% of workers found curiosity necessary to find new ideas, about the same number complained that they did not have the opportunity to ask relevant questions at work.

While 84% of study participants reported that their employers encourage curiosity, 60% said they faced obstacles when trying to be curious at work. Indeed, it is well known that managers often dampen the curiosity of staff. Top managers reject new ideas proposed by employees because they believe it will cause internal conflicts, a protracted and complicated process of discussion and approval, and mistakes that are not discovered in time will cost too much. Instead of innovating, managers prefer to focus on proven working models and processes.?Amazing how curiosity keeps creating controversy, isn’t it??

At the same time, some companies have realized the critical value of curiosity. Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO, once said: “We run this company on questions, not answers.”?It’s no surprise that Google, being the first point of call to quench the curiosity of internet users, knows how to keep its employees curious with initiatives such as Talks at Google. They regularly invite authors, scientists, actors, artists, filmmakers, and musicians to discuss their work. They deliver multi-disciplinary knowledge to over 125,000 employees worldwide in order to stimulate innovation.

Interesting: A quick check of LinkedIn job searches shows that the most job postings demanding "intellectual curiosity” are related to positions in... recruitment. Perhaps it is the only occupation where being curious is seen as “socially acceptable”, and even crucial. Some other job postings requiring curiosity are in IT, science, business development - generally in exploratory fields. At the same time, increasing numbers of job seekers describe themselves as intellectually curious or even “insatiably curious.”

IBM president Jim Whitehurst ?shared an interesting insight into his job candidate selection:?

“How do I determine if candidates have this intellectual curiosity? When I interview candidates today, I find myself asking questions to help me determine if they understood their previous company’s challenges. If not, why not? I find that people who are curious, and who care about their companies and industries can grow into company leaders. I want those people. Unsurprisingly, I’ve found that you can talk to intellectually curious individuals for hours.”

How to Reignite Curiosity?

When I was reading one of the very few books on curiosity, “WHY”?by Mario Livio , I was not surprised to find out that the ‘most curious’ people he interviewed for his book were all modern-day polymaths!

One of his curiosity heroes is Brian May, the legendary guitarist of the rock band Queen, composer of such hits as “We Will Rock you”, “I Want it All”, “Who Wants to Live Forever” and “The Show Must Go On”, known for his legendary riffs (and equally legendary hair), happens to hold a PhD in astrophysics from Imperial College in London, and is a science team collaborator for NASA’s New Horizon mission to Pluto. What a beautiful image: Queen's lead guitarist writing an extensive scientific paper about stardust. Brian May is also an animal rights activist and an expert in Victorian stereophotography.?

I love the answer given by one of the polymaths interviewed by Livio, Fabiola Gianotti.

To the question “Are you as curious today as you were when you were a child?”, she replied: “If anything. I am even more curious. I am driven by curiosity and the pleasure of learning. Nothing delights me more than understanding something I didn’t understand before.”?

This is pretty much the same as what I heard from many of my polymathic friends.?

Do polymaths know how to stay curious? Indeed, they do — they know the secret! I have been researching and developing a methodology on how to stimulate or 'reignite' curiosity, and I look forward to sharing it with institutions and individuals.

I am convinced that making children and adults curious will solve many problems with learning because it will make it intrinsic.

In today’s world, where cognitive abilities need to be higher than ever due to AI, whether educators and employers are ambivalent about letting curiosity flourish, we must make it happen.

Otherwise, humanity will not be able to collaborate effectively with AI.

Check out my interview on Ed Brenagar's podcast to hear about my journey of curiosity .

Grab a copy of my book 'Why Polymaths? ' to learn more about the polymathic nature and discover your own polymathy!