Curiosity is a driving force of scientific research. Whether in graduate school or elementary grades, anyone who has been taught “the scientific method” knows that asking questions lies at its core. What is on the other side of the moon? Where do a flower’s colors come from? How does a single cell grow into a whole human being? Why is it so difficult to breathe at the top of a mountain?
While it is true that business ventures of various kinds sponsor scientists’ work towards future utility (profit), much scientific research originates from pure curiosity. Application comes as an afterthought, distantly following a desire to probe and investigate. As humans, we have this habit of wondering about things that we cannot sense directly. We want to know stuff even when there is no discernible benefit for knowing it. In today’s cultural landscape, curiosity for its own sake is seen as the root of innovation and stands as an indispensable virtue.
But it has not always been so. According to Philip Ball in his book, Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything, the curiosity we now treasure was once widely disdained.
Before the scientific revolution, curiosity was the way of Eve. Out of pride, we insist on knowing what is not ours to know. Purposeless ponderings about the natural world sat in the same category as prying about one’s neighbors: none of your business. Curiosity was reaching for the forbidden fruit all over again. If the answer was not immediately useful in some obvious way, then asking the question was much more likely to produce trouble than good.
With this history in mind, a clash becomes apparent: if Christian ideas were responsible for suppressing the curiosity that drives science, how can anyone claim that Christian ideas inspired the scientific revolution?
For science to make any sense, one must be confident that the universe is knowable, operating according to unchanging laws which can be tested and understood. It has been “fashioned with reason,” as William of Conches asserted. The God of the Bible as a Creator, external to the universe, provides such a context in a way that a contentious pantheon of gods or an illusory world does not.
In relation to curiosity, though, it was a new, stronger Christian idea that dominated the other. Ball writes, “Nothing was too mean or trivial to be neglected, for as Boyle said, it was all God’s work and therefore worthy of attention.” Can we truly say that some natural phenomenon is “none of our business” when God saw it fit to orchestrate? In a world so perfectly designed for human life, is anything really irrelevant to us? The scientific revolution was the outworking of permission to be curious about anything, putting off the pride of Eve by crediting the Creator for both what was discovered and the ability to discover it.
“The important thing is to not stop questioning… Never lose a holy curiosity.”
Einstein, 1955
Hundreds of years after the scientific revolution, curiosity is the way of Einstein. Genius. Breakthrough. Human Achievement. Yet the current scientific attitude has drifted far away from any association with a Creator, at least on any large scale. The sacred and the secular are separated into nonoverlapping domains, and science bears a secular classification. I doubt that the agnostic Einstein was speaking in the biblical sense when he called curiosity “holy,” but I believe the biblical sense can be applied. How might we return to a holy curiosity in science? What might it look like to be curious in a way that points back to the glory of our Creator?
This question is worthy of consideration and discussion, so please add your thoughts in the comments. Here are mine:
A holy curiosity ends in worship.
Curiosity is linked to wonder. Incredible amounts of beauty and order reside in nature, drawing us to marvel at things that have been made. It is easy to stop there, in awe of the created thing under investigation. After all, such things are inherently interesting! But we do not want to find ourselves worshipping the creation (Romans 1:25). Rather, every created thing worth our wonder should prompt us to worship the Creator.
Curiosity itself is another created thing. Thus, holy curiosity acknowledges the ability to be curious, to wonder, to rationally investigate, as a special gift from God to humankind. Even the most “curious” of animals do not ask purposeless questions of their world.
Though our all-knowing God has never been curious, curiosity uniquely positions humans for relationship with him. It is the very thing that inspires us to ask “the big questions” and to seek God. Then, of course, once we find God, curiosity enables us to know him intimately, to fulfill our purpose. Far from an exercise of pride, holy curiosity brings us to humble worship.
Science Magnifies 