Curiosity: Another BIG Word

My most recent Marketing Matters column for Business North highlighted four big words, noteworthy for their depth and broad application. The idea was extracted from weekly meetings with the late Dan Hansen as we plotted and developed what we'd hoped would be an epic Wild West novel. 

It wasn't a long list yet, but it was strong. While reading the history of math in James D. Nickel's Mathematics: Is God Silent? it became apparent that curiosity was a major feature of nearly all advances in math, science and human understanding. Why does an apple fall and not go up? Why does the sun rise in the east and set in the west? Why does the Fibonacci sequence keep repeating itself throughout nature?

Curiosity is one of the great engines of civilization. Long before formal science or organized philosophy, human beings were asking questions: What lies beyond the horizon? Why do the seasons change? What causes illness? How do the stars move across the sky? That restless impulse to know more—to look past the obvious and probe the unknown—has propelled nearly every significant advance in human history.

The earliest explorers were driven not merely by necessity, but by wonder. Seafaring cultures pushed into open water without certainty of what awaited them. Their curiosity expanded maps, connected continents, and reshaped economies. The same impulse animated the thinkers of ancient Greece, who refused to explain the world solely through myth and instead sought rational patterns behind natural phenomena. From those inquiries came philosophy, mathematics, and the foundations of democratic thought.

Curiosity also transformed medicine. Questions about the causes of disease gradually replaced superstition with observation and experiment. The scientific revolution emerged from individuals willing to doubt inherited assumptions and test them against evidence. Curiosity drove men to create telescopes and microscopes to explore the skies above and the incredibly tiny phenomenon invisible to the naked eye. Telescopes, microscopes and later the laboratory were tools born of the desire to see more clearly and understand more deeply.

Technological innovation followed the same pattern. The steam engine, electricity, flight, and digital computing all began with someone asking, “What if?” 

Civilizations stagnate when curiosity is suppressed; they flourish when inquiry is encouraged. Businesses and people likewise.

[EdNote: In light of these things, it's a curious thing that we warn people against being too curious by repeating the maxim, "Curiosity killed the cat." Where are the admonitions to be curious?]

Importantly, curiosity is not mere idle speculation. It requires humility—the recognition that we do not yet know—and courage—the willingness to challenge established ideas. It invites risk, but it also opens possibility.

Dan Hansen's fundamental motivational driver was this insatiable curiosity. If you're feeling a measure of deadness inside, it may be because you've become trapped in your routines. Routine dulls the senses; curiosity sharpens them. It pulls us out of autopilot and into engagement.

Curiosity makes us feel more alive because it awakens us to possibility. When we ask questions, explore new ideas, or notice something unfamiliar, the world expands.  To be curious is to lean forward into life rather than drift through it.

Think about it.