Book description
There was a time when curiosity was condemned. To be curious was to
delve into matters that didn't concern you - after all, the original
sin stemmed from a desire for forbidden knowledge. Through curiosity
our innocence was lost.
Yet this hasn't deterred us. Today we spend vast sums trying to
recreate the first instants of creation in particle accelerators, out
of pure desire to know. There seems now to be no question too
vast or too trivial to be ruled out of bounds: Why can fleas jump so
high? What is gravity? What shape are clouds? Today curiosity is no
longer reviled, but celebrated.
Examining how our inquisitive impulse first became sanctioned,
changing from a vice to a virtue, Curiosity begins with the age
when modern science began, a time that spans the lives of Galileo and
Isaac Newton. It reveals a complex story, in which the liberation -
and the taming - of curiosity was linked to magic, religion,
literature, travel, trade and empire.
By examining the rise of curiosity, we can ask what has become of it
today: how it functions in science, how it is spun and packaged and
sold, how well it is being sustained and honoured, and how the
changing shape of science influences the kinds of questions it may ask.
Philip Ball is a freelance writer and a consultant editor for
Nature
, where he previously worked as an editor for physical sciences. He
writes regularly in the scientific and popular media, and his many books
on scientific subjects include
Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads To Another
, which won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books
.
His latest books include
The Music Instinct
,
Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Triumph of the
Medieval Mind
, and, most recently,
Unnatural: The Heretical Idea of Making People
. Philip obtained a PhD in physics from the University of Bristol.
