January 27, 2023

239. Chasing Curiosity in Science and Philosophy feat. Dani Bassett and Perry Zurn

50 minutes

The brain is a curious thing, but how does curiosity happen in it? Where does curiosity begin, and what does that process look like? Curiosity does quite a lot inside the brain, from connecting dots of knowledge to shaping entire architectures of thought and organization. Understanding the underpinnings of this motivating force can allow us to harness its power for our own advancement.

Dani Bassett is the J. Peter Skirkanich Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, with appointments in the Departments of Bioengineering, Electrical & Systems Engineering, Physics & Astronomy, Neurology, and Psychiatry. They are also an external professor of the Santa Fe Institute. Perry Zurn is an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Philosophy Department of Philosophy & Religion at American University in Washington D.C. Bassett and Zurn are also twins, and co-authors of the new book, Curious Minds: The Power of Connection, about the nature of curiosity, where it originates from, and how it functions.

Dani, Perry, and Greg talk about curiosity as it relates to both Perry’s specialty area of Philosophy and Dani’s specialty area of Neuroscience. They discuss lessons they learned from researching and writing their book and get into some of the discoveries they made inside. They talk about how people can be subdivided into busy bodies, hunters, and dancers and the traits of each. They discuss early school experiences that allowed them to chase and foster the power of curiosity in their own childhoods, and they touch on what a collective curiosity would entail.

Episode Quotes:

Curiosity is a connective process

[Dani Bassett ] 06:39: We argue that it's that connective property of information gathering, information seeking that is what curiosity does. And it provides us with a full, interconnected knowledge base that allows us to reason from our past and make new decisions in the future. It allows us to understand the mental processes of another person, and it also allows us to connect among people themselves.

[Perry Zurn] 47:01: Creativity along the way, as fundamental to what it means to be educated, would change the entire structure of education.

The practices of attunement

[Perry Zurn] 13:04: When we're curious, we direct our observational skills—our capacity to notice or be attuned to certain things or be attuned to particular dynamics, for example. That's something that's at the core of what curiosity does. That's how it does some of its connecting work.

The role of a teacher in a child’s curiosity

[Dani Bassett ]13:04: Teachers are in this very tricky situation where they have an opportunity to model and to say, "Here, look at how my mind moves." You could try this too. And they also need to be quiet and not forecasting their own curiosity sometimes so that they can notice, hear, support, value, and encourage the kind of curiosity that the child has.

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