Writing about Curiosity
Every writer wonders what they’re writing about. The only way I’ve ever found to know is to look back a little at what’s come out of my keyboard and see if there’s a theme. So I did this, and I think I’ve been writing about wonder. This is a haiku from Dec 12th
I just edited the
wikipedia page for
curiosity
I did too. Curiosity fascinates me. The wikipedia entry noted that it is “the fuel that drives science”, but I felt that was unfair. As if science is the only thing we want to know! I had to add that curiosity is the thing that makes us want to know anything at all; perhaps it’s an external form of creativity. Wikipedia is, of course, the best plaything for the curious since the invention of writing, and I have often been curious about it.
When you edit Wikipedia, what do you write about? Did you sit in the front row or the back row as a child? Did you grow up on science fiction, were you an activist in college? Did no one understand you, or have you always been perfectly normal? … Who was that one person in your life who was once patient enough to give you their best answer, over and over, to your plaintive “why?” (more)
My fascination with curiosity runs to knowledge and belief generally. In the past few months I have written a piece about trying to understand why we believe what we believe,
I was plunged headfirst into the debate with an ambitious little snot of a web-startup wannabe millionaire. Running through the arguments in great detail I was forced to ask the very pertinent question, why do I believe that global warming is real, and man-made, and a serious problem? (more)
a political tirade that was intentionally abiguous,
But you saw it, right? Our man won the debates. Come on, it was totally obvious that the other guy simply does not understand what needs to be done. Just ask anyone you know. (more)
and even a parable about the deeper problem of where knowledge comes from at all:
The North Sage insisted that all knowledge would come from within. The South Sage asked how that could be possible, and claimed that one could only truly learn from observing nature. (more)
There are a lot of things I’d like to know about knowledge, about how each person comes by it, about its relation to the “real world” (whatever that means), and about how and we later change our minds — or refuse to. But mostly, there are a lot of things I’d like to know. An unpublished one from 2004:
today I wondered
why am I so curious?
I wish I could know
