💡 on curiosity

Humanity’s natural curiosity is fascinating. We’ve mastered all we need to survive, we’ve beaten the evolutionary game, and yet we want more. We venture to the moon and to Mars, we search for mathematical and philosophical truth, we conduct studies, do research and look for answers (even when there’s no immediate reason to do so). 

This isn’t a new trend, either. Thousands of years ago, the first humans to reach isolated Pacific islands only did so after leaving their homes for the open ocean, without any promise of finding land. For centuries, revolutionary new discoveries—that the Earth revolves around the Sun, or that carbon emissions contribute to climate change, for example—have been made and publicized at the risk of rebuttal or even persecution.

Innovation is a mixed bag, though—for more reasons than just the social unrest it causes. A German chemist named Fritz Haber’s intellectual inquiry led to methods of turning aerial nitrogen to fertilizer that now feed half the world’s population—but also to mustard gas and the use of chemical weapons in the First World War. Atomic energy research has given us ways to efficiently produce energy, along with weapons of mass destruction that threaten global safety. The life-giving and life-threatening consequences of such innovation are inseparable. Discovery is, and always will be, inherently dangerous—it gives us new ways to feed and heal people, alongside new methods of warfare and new means of division.

But, at the same time, it’s because of our search for answers and the resultant innovation that we’ve progressed past the Stone Age. It’s because of medical research that we no longer live in a world where half of people born die before adulthood, and because of agricultural innovation that we don’t have to worry about growing our own food. Thanks to the human tradition of curiosity, many of us live lives of ease, and have the ability to use an abundance of resources to help the less fortunate and create a more equitable future for all. 

Every individual working towards some intellectual pursuit is a contributor to the greater human story, and the search for answers that has defined our species for as long as we’ve been a species. Curiosity yields new knowledge for the benefit of all, and that knowledge, however theoretical, helps us understand the world in our place in it. Curiosity has gotten us to the ends of the earth, to the Moon, and beyond—and it will continue to do so, as we continue to explore, and continue working to improve one another’s lives.