Notes

I cite most of my sources in the text; here I attempt to give a bit more context where necessary and guide the reader in search of further reading.

INTRODUCTION
The Fourth Drive

I first read about Kanzi in Professor Paul Harris’s fascinating book, Trusting What You’re Told: How Children Learn from Others. It was Harris who made the point that despite Kanzi’s exceptional intelligence, he displays no evidence of intellectual curiosity. John Lloyd was kind enough to share his insights into the nature of curiosity during a memorable interview at the QI offices in central London. Sophie von Stumm, one of our foremost researchers into curiosity, introduced me to the concept of ‘need for cognition’. I came across the da Vinci notebook fragments via the blog of Robert Krulwich, with whom I’m familiar from Radiolab, a regular and delicious source of epistemic stimulation. The work of the psychologist Paul Silvia on the nature of ‘interest’ was influential on my early thinking. George Loewenstein’s comprehensive and lucid account of the history of research into curiosity, which culminates in his proposal of a new theory, was invaluable, and where I first read about the distinction between diversive and epistemic curiosity. The statistic about average shot times in American movies is from an article in the Wall Street Journal by Rachel Dodes, who cites John Belton of Rutgers University. I owe Annie Murphy Paul for my discovery of Robert Wilson’s extraordinary study of ageing brains. The Charles Eames quote I first came across on Maria Popova’s indispensable blog Brain Pickings.

CHAPTER ONE
Three Journeys

When I came across Brian Smith’s account of his childhood encounter with a gun I knew I wanted to use it for this book. I thank him for consenting to me doing so. Alexander Arguelles tells his own story as well as you would expect on his website, and is interviewed in Mezzofanti’s Gift, Michael Erard’s book about extraordinary language learners. David Dwan, author of The Cambridge Companion to Edmund Burke, was kind enough to discuss Burke with me. Stephen Kaplan’s essay on the evolutionary origins of curiosity introduced me to the research on art and mystery. The neuroscience research I describe was led by Colin Camerer at Caltech. Mark Pagel’s book about the human facility for cooperation, Wired for Culture, was influential on my thinking about what curiosity is for.

CHAPTER TWO
How Curiosity Begins

I spent a fascinating day at Babylab and I am very grateful to Teodora and Katarina for being so generous with their time and expertise. My daughter Io wasn’t yet born when I visited but she has since been to Babylab as a research subject, and wears an EEG cap with panache. Alison Gopnik, as well as being an eminent psychologist, is a terrific writer, and I have absorbed much of what I know about early childhood development from her pieces, starting with the book she co-wrote with Andrew Meltzoff and Patricia Kuhl, The Scientist in the Crib. The longitudinal study of early exploratory behaviour and adolescent achievement was authored by Marcus Bornstein and colleagues (see bibliography). I came across Michelle Chouinard’s research, and much more about the history of research into question-asking, in Paul Harris’s book. I am grateful to my friends with young children for providing me with examples of their questions.

CHAPTER THREE
Puzzles and Mysteries

Susan Engel was very generous with her time and expertise on curiosity in childhood. I first came across the distinction between exploring and exploiting in Alison Gopnik’s work. George Loewenstein’s review of curiosity research, already mentioned, informed my account of theories of curiosity. I am grateful to Janet Metcalfe for helping me understand the significance of Daniel Berlyne’s work. I found da Vinci’s description of being at the entrance to a cave in an essay by Hans Blumenberg, one of the great historians of curiosity. Ben Greenman’s article about his son was formative in my thinking about the relationship between curiosity and the internet.

CHAPTER FOUR
Three Ages of Curiosity

A key source for my discussion of the history of curiosity in Western society was Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, a collection of essays edited by Evans and Marr. My discussion of curiosity cabinets was partly inspired by a wonderful illustrated blog post on the subject by the historian Benjamin Breen. My description of the key figures of Britain’s ‘Industrial Enlightenment’ is coloured by Jenny Uglow’s excellent book, The Lunar Men, and my conception of it as a grassroots revolution in curiosity was influenced by Roy Porter’s work. It was Ethan Zuckerman who directed me to the origin of the term serendipity. I first came across Vannevar Bush’s essay via Brain Pickings.

CHAPTER FIVE
Curiosity’s Rising Rewards

I first came across the concept of the ‘new’ digital divide in an article in the New York Times by Matt Richtel. Pew Research carries out regular research into various aspects of the ‘digital divide’, as does the Kaiser Family Foundation. Richtel also authored a piece for The Times on technology and teaching, which mentions the ‘Wikipedia problem’.

CHAPTER SIX
The Power of Questions

I spent a fascinating hour on the phone with Dan Rothstein; you can read more about his foundation’s work and techniques in his book Make Just One Change. The research into question-asking I cite is drawn from Paul Harris’s review of it in his book, Trusting What You’re Told. Annette Lareau’s book, Unequal Childhoods, is a great work of observational sociology and an engrossing read. I came across the case of Jerome Keviel via Linsey McGoey’s work.

CHAPTER SEVEN
The Importance of Knowing

I am deeply influenced in my thinking about education by the work of Daniel Willingham, who provides a lucid, reasonable, evidence-based voice in a field full of sound and fury. I recommend his book, Why Don’t Students Like School? I’m also indebted to Daisy Christodoulou’s deeply researched and powerfully argued book, Seven Myths about Education, which everyone interested in the subject should read. Richard Mayer’s work is cited in an excellent paper by Richard Clark and colleagues on the weight of evidence for ‘fully guided instruction’. The quote from a teaching union is from an unsigned piece on the website of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers: ‘A 21st-century curriculum cannot have the transfer of knowledge at its core for the simple reason that the selection of what is required has become problematic in an information-rich age.’ It’s a statement that is depressing in more than one way, one of them being the implication that if something is problematic you should give up on it.

CHAPTER EIGHT
Seven Ways to Stay Curious

1. STAY FOOLISH

The definitive biographies of Walt Disney and Steve Jobs are by, respectively, Neal Gabler and Walter Isaacson. The details on Jeff Bezos are drawn from a profile by Peter Whoriskey in the Washington Post, published shortly after Bezos became its owner.

2. BUILD THE DATABASE

Young’s book on idea production is still in print; I urge you to obtain a copy and start producing.

3. FORAGE LIKE A FOXHOG

I am very grateful to the brilliant Paola Antonelli for taking the time to talk to me. Our conversation helped me form my thinking on the links between curiosity and creativity. Charlie Munger’s ‘Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom . . .’ is available on the web. For a superb exposition of the value of being a generalist, read Robert Twigger’s essay for Aeon, entitled ‘Master of Many Trades’, available online.

4. ASK THE BIG WHY

I’m grateful to Jonathan Powell for telling me as much as he was able to about his extraordinary work. His book about the Northern Ireland peace process, Great Hatred, Little Room, offers a revealing insight into the intense, relentless and often futile-seeming negotiations that eventually led to a lasting settlement.

5. BE A THINKERER

Benjamin Franklin’s commitment to epistemic curiosity was at once admirable and slightly chilling. In his autobiography he relates how, on a return to Boston after many years away, he visited the boarding house run by his mother, whom he hadn’t seen since he was a child. Instead of immediately reintroducing himself to her, he spent an evening observing her as if he was just another guest, interested to see whether some maternal intuition would enable her to recognise him. I was alerted to Franklin’s interest in the effect of oil on water by Edmund Morgan’s superb biography of Franklin. I found more details, including the trip to Portsmouth harbour, in Charles Tanford’s book. I am grateful to Mikkel Ramussen, an innovation specialist at the ReD consultancy in Denmark, for the point about the importance of details to big thinking, which emerged over the course of a fascinating and fruitful conversation in London.

6. QUESTION YOUR TEASPOONS

James Ward’s blog, I Like Boring Things, is a good resource for those interested in the same, and contains details of upcoming Boring conferences. George Perec was a minor genius of twentieth-century literature; his idiosyncratic, profoundly intelligent fiction and essays are worth investigating if you haven’t already. Hazel Hutchinson, who has written an excellent short biography of Henry James, kindly took the time to help me understand the nature and uses of The Master’s curiosity. Laura McInerney keeps an excellent blog about education. I’m grateful to Carol Sansone for talking to me and pleased that she has found work that is both interesting and important. Arthur Aron was also generous with his time and insights.

7. TURN PUZZLES INTO MYSTERIES

My account of William Friedman’s career draws from a superb essay in Cabinet magazine by William H. Sherman. Readers can consult the article online for a fuller account, including more details on messages hidden in that photograph. Friedman didn’t quite succeed in spelling out ‘KNOWLEDGE IS POWER’: they were four people short of the number needed to complete the ‘R’. Friedman, who is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, had the same phrase inscribed as his epitaph.

AFTERWORD
Bjani

Matt Fraction’s stirring reply to his depressed correspondent can be found here http://mattfraction.com/post/63999786236/sorry-to-put-this-on-you-but-i-have-an-honest-question