Curiosity

There was a time when curiosity was condemned.

Through curiosity, our innocence was said to be 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. No longer reviled, curiosity is now celebrated.

By examining the rise of curiosity from the dawn of modern science to today, we can examine how it functions in science, how it is spun, packaged and sold, and how the changing shape of science influences the kinds of questions it may ask.

Philip Ballwrites regularly in the scientific and popular media and worked for many years as an editor for physical sciences atNature. His books cover a wide range of scientific and cultural phenomena, and includeCritical Mass: How One Thing Leads To Another(winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books),The Music Instinct,Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything,Serving The Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Science Under HitlerandInvisible: The history of the Unseen from Plato to Particle Physics.

A tour through the history of human curiosity, from its original condemnation as sin, blossoming through the lives of Galileo and Newton, to its current role central to modern society.