Xem mẫu
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Curiosity
Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteris-tics of a vigorous intellect.
Samuel Johnson
If you or I had been in Napoleon’s shoes after his shattering defeat at Waterloo we might well have lapsed into a state of inward-looking depression if not despair. Not so Napoleon. Following his defeat he abdicated with the apparent intention of going into exile in America. At Rochefort, however, he found the harbour blockaded and he decided to surrender himself to the Royal Navy. He was escorted aboard HMS Bellerophon. It was a new experience for him to see the inside of a ship of the Royal Navy, the instrument of France’s defeat at Trafalgar a few years earlier. An English eyewitness on
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The Art of Creative Thinking
board noticed that ‘he is extremely curious, and never passes anything remarkable in the ship without immediately demanding its use, and inquiring minutely into the manner thereof’.
‘The important thing is not to stop questioning’, said Einstein. ‘Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eter-nity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.’
Such curiosity is – or should be – the appetite of the intellect. Creative thinkers have it, because they need to be taking in information from many different sources. The novelist, William Trevor, for example, sees his role as an observer of human nature: ‘You’ve got to like human beings, and be very curious,’ he says, otherwise he doesn’t think it is possible to write fiction.
Of course, curiosity in this sense must be distinguished from the sort of curiosity that proverbially kills the cat. The latter implies prying into other people’s minds in an objectionable or intrusive way, or meddling in their personal affairs. True curiosity is simply the eager desire to learn and know. Such disinterested intellectual curiosity can become habitual. Leonardo da Vinci’s motto was ‘I question’.
‘To be an inventor is an eclectic sort of life’, said Sir Clive Sinclair. ‘You’ve got to know about a lot of different subjects in different ways, so you have to teach yourself what you want to know. I don’t think university is much of a help if you want to be an inventor – and that’s all I ever wanted.’
One of the prime aims of education, it could be argued, is to develop such an inquisitive mind. ‘The whole art of teaching,’
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Curiosity
wrote Anatole France, ‘is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.’
‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice in Wonderland. Too often it is only something curious, rare or strange that arouses our curiosity. But what excites attention merely because it is strange or odd is often not worth any further investigation. We do have to be selective in our curiosity.
There is a story about a young officer of whom it was said: ‘His men will follow him anywhere – out of a sense of curiosity.’ In creative thinking curiosity about what will happen next is an important ingredient in motivation. Ken Rowat makes that point:
Creative activity, agonizing though it may be at times, is essentially life enhancing, often joyful, and this can be judged not from the fixed smiles worn by models advertising power tools but by the extent to which the individual is seri-ously engrossed in his activity. Outside making love, men and women never feel better than when they are totally engaged in exploration or construction, especially when the motivation is simply:‘I wonder what will happen if I do this?’
In other words, it is not simply a case of being curious in order to gather information, the raw materials of creative thought. Rather, creative thinking is itself a way of learning something new. You are not quite sure where your train of thought will lead you. So there is a connection between thinking and learning or rather trying to teach oneself.
‘Thinking is trying to make up the gap in one’s education’, wrote the philosopher, Gilbert Ryle, in On Thinking (1979). It is not, of course, a matter of teaching yourself something that you want to know; you cannot teach it because you do not
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The Art of Creative Thinking
know it. ‘What am I trying to think out for myself is indeed something that the Angel Gabriel conceivably might have known and taught me instead,’ continued Ryle, ‘but it is something that no one in fact did teach me. That is why I have to think. I swim because I am not a passenger on someone else’s ferryboat. I think, as I swim, for myself. No one else could do this for me.’
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Curiosity
KEYPOINTS
‘Curiosity in children is but an appetite for knowledge’, wrote the philosopher John Locke. You should aim to
retain throughout your life that eager desire to see, learn or know. Curiosity is the mind on tiptoe.
Creative thinkers tend to have a habit of curiosity that leads them to give searching attention to what interests
them.
Thinking is a way of trying to find out for yourself. If you always blindly accepted what others told you there
would be nothing to be curious about.
One way to develop your curiosity is to begin to ask more questions, both when you are talking with others and
when you are talking in your mind to yourself. Questioning, carefully done, helps you to distinguish between what is known and what is unknown.
Go round asking a lot of damfool questions and taking chances. Only through curiosity can we discover opportu-nities, and only by gambling can we take advantage of them.
Clarence Birdseye, American industrialist
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