Thank you for supporting our publishing ministry. To keep reading, subscribe-subscriptions begin at $4.95-or log in. This article is available to Christian Century magazine subscribers only. We confuse the practice of curiosity with ease of access to information and forget that real curiosity requires the exercise of effort.” On the other hand, he says, “we romanticize the natural curiosity of children and worry that it will be contaminated by knowledge, when the opposite is true. Even today the word suggests something not quite right. Augustine, he notes, equated curiosity with temptation. It has long been disparaged by schools, businesses, and especially the church. In Leslie’s telling, curiosity is far from a valued quality. Stories that sound cautionary-two boys with a loaded pistol-demonstrate a hunger for knowledge. Ian Leslie’s Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It is a well-researched book that cites a number of relevant scientific studies, frames concepts related to knowledge and curiosity with interesting anecdotes, and has a solid bibliography for the curious people to dive further after finishing Curious. Stories that sound inspiring prove cautionary: for example, a man learns over two dozen languages, only to rue that he has not chosen one for deeper study. And, in his book's doomy scenario, if you become incurious, 'your life will become drained of colour, interest and pleasure. “Tell us your curiosity story.”) Now comes this book by Ian Leslie, full of such stories, and a very curious book it is.Īlmost every page of Leslie’s book springs a surprise. Or, as Ian Leslie argues, less curious to develop fact into understanding. It’s a staple of TED lectures, a buzzword of educational reformers, and an advertising theme of Vanity Fair magazine. Curiosity seems to be a word of the moment.
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