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Curious Minds: The Power of Connection
An exhilarating, genre-bending exploration of curiosity’s powerful capacity to connect ideas and people.
Curious about something? Google it. Look at it. Ask a question. But is curiosity simply information seeking? According to this exhilarating, genre-bending book, what’s left out of the conventional understanding of curiosity are the wandering tracks, the weaving concepts, the knitting of ideas, and the thatching of knowledge systems—the networks, the relations between ideas and between people. Curiosity, say Perry Zurn and Dani Bassett, is a practice of it connects ideas into networks of knowledge, and it connects knowers themselves, both to the knowledge they seek and to each other.
Zurn and Bassett—identical twins who write that their book “represents the thought of one mind and two bodies”—harness their respective expertise in the humanities and the sciences to get irrepressibly curious about curiosity. Traipsing across literatures of antiquity and medieval science, Victorian poetry and nature essays, as well as work by writers from a variety of marginalized communities, they trace a multitudinous curiosity. They identify three styles of curiosity—the busybody, who collects stories, creating loose knowledge networks; the hunter, who hunts down secrets or discoveries, creating tight networks; and the dancer, who takes leaps of creative imagination, creating loopy ones. Investigating what happens in a curious brain, they offer an accessible account of the network neuroscience of curiosity. And they sketch out a new kind of curiosity-centric and inclusive education that embraces everyone’s curiosity. The book performs the very curiosity that it describes, inviting readers to participate—to be curious with the book and not simply about it.
Curious about something? Google it. Look at it. Ask a question. But is curiosity simply information seeking? According to this exhilarating, genre-bending book, what’s left out of the conventional understanding of curiosity are the wandering tracks, the weaving concepts, the knitting of ideas, and the thatching of knowledge systems—the networks, the relations between ideas and between people. Curiosity, say Perry Zurn and Dani Bassett, is a practice of it connects ideas into networks of knowledge, and it connects knowers themselves, both to the knowledge they seek and to each other.
Zurn and Bassett—identical twins who write that their book “represents the thought of one mind and two bodies”—harness their respective expertise in the humanities and the sciences to get irrepressibly curious about curiosity. Traipsing across literatures of antiquity and medieval science, Victorian poetry and nature essays, as well as work by writers from a variety of marginalized communities, they trace a multitudinous curiosity. They identify three styles of curiosity—the busybody, who collects stories, creating loose knowledge networks; the hunter, who hunts down secrets or discoveries, creating tight networks; and the dancer, who takes leaps of creative imagination, creating loopy ones. Investigating what happens in a curious brain, they offer an accessible account of the network neuroscience of curiosity. And they sketch out a new kind of curiosity-centric and inclusive education that embraces everyone’s curiosity. The book performs the very curiosity that it describes, inviting readers to participate—to be curious with the book and not simply about it.
312 pages, Hardcover
Published September 6, 2022
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2773 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
July 5, 2022
You were curious when your hand reached out to pick up this book. What is that curiosity? Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral? Is it ethereal or tangible? Like a loris, can it be categorized and classified, or like love, is it difficult to define? It feels impossible to choose precise words to answer these questions. And yet curiosity seems as if it should be definable because . . . well, because . . . because it is so simple. And perhaps it seems so simple because it is so common.
Obviously, it was curiosity that led me to reading Curious Minds: The Power of Connection, but for the life of me, I can’t now recall what I hoped to get out of this. I know I thought this would be a more accessible/general interest treatment of the phenomenon of “curiosity” (and was excited to learn that this is a book written by twin professors who approached the subject from their complementary backgrounds in Philosophy and Neuroscience), but honestly, as well conceived and crafted and presented as this material is, much of it was beyond my ken. I don’t regret challenging myself with this book, but sadly, there were few nodes, edges, cracks, or boundaries that held my slippery grip. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final form.)
Curiosity is one word, one string of letters, one concept in the mind, but curiosity also has multiple manifestations, a plethora of practices, and kindred kinds in many bodies. Like a genus spanning species or our mother embracing her eleven children, curiosity is both one and many. The one and many nature of curiosity is an opportunity for the attainment of epistemic freedoms: we are permitted to be curious! But it is also a liability for the perpetration of epistemic injustices: we are permitted to be curious in less than many ways.
From the beginning, I was fascinated by the authors’ background (and being particularly curious about people, I do wish they had written about themselves more): Perry Zurn and Dani S Bassett were homeschooled by a mother who allowed them (and their nine siblings) to self-direct their education and follow their own interests. Yet, this was also a home that enforced strict traditional gender roles, so the twins eventually broke away, “Buoyed by the kindness of unlooked-for allies along the way, we broke down walls, crossed boundaries, and scaled heights to become the interdisciplinary scholars that we are today — scholars who are committed to recognizing and resisting the epistemic inequities that surround and suffuse us. We are definitively not what we were meant to be, but we are following the ever-becoming trajectory of the curiosity instilled in us: one that spans, one that connects, one that embraces, and one that builds; one that appreciates the crosscurrents and coalitions within and through which we come to know.” That brief introduction is all we get to the authors’ backgrounds, but Google tells me that today, Perry Zurn is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at American University, and Dani Smith 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. All that to note: Zurn and Bassett bring an incredible amount of experience and expertise to the table, and as academics who “are committed to recognizing and resisting epistemic inequities”, Curious Minds has a particular focus on nontraditional (read: non-Western, non-patriarchal) definitions of curiosity and knowledge-acquisition. Chapters alternate in voice and focus as each of the authors write from their own discipline, and throughout, much is quoted from thinkers (academic and literary) throughout the ages. But I don’t know if I ever really understood what curiosity is or how it works (and can acknowledge that the failing is my own.)
The busybody, the hunter, and the dancer each highlight a unique praxis of curiosity. Whether it involves collecting new bits of information, tracking down specific answers, or experimenting with breaks in tradition, each model illuminates a different modal dimension. They are not static representations of curiosity as such but rather dynamic depictions of how curiosity works, how it behaves, and what it does. They portray how curiosity moves. Throughout philosophical history, busybodying, hunting, and dancing capture specific kinesthetic signatures that map out different styles of knowledge network building in conceptual and social space.
I did find it useful when Zurn and Bassett explored these three models of curiosity, and for the most part (although they stress the types are not mutually exclusive), my own magpie mind seems to be a “busybody” (gadflying about, collecting tidbits, “attuned to the wide wildness of the world”), while the authors are more likely “dancers” (leaping, uprooting, exploring “with serendipitous inklings and exuberant hopes the limits of the seeable and the sayable”.) So while I nose about in the mud, the authors are spinning through the clouds, and that might just explain why I had trouble connecting with them.
Near the end, Curious Minds has a section on the future of education — and while I had hoped that I would find this practical bit more engaging (hoping, actually, that they would return to their own upbringing and explore how early academic freedom led to their ultimate academic success), it was still a bit murky for me. The writing throughout is highly crafted — and this does not read like a textbook — but while the authors were obviously delighting in wordcraft and wordplay, it felt like wordwork to me. Consider the following:
Cracks conduct movement and advance entropy. The crack of curiosity allows the hidden to fly with hatchling wings, the unthought to effuse in a lavalike flow, and the buried to root through nutrient-rich soil. A rooting radicle. A radical conception. A thought uprooted, rerooted, changed from the root as radicalized. A riddled similarity, the curious mind and the first fruition of the seedling are notably alike. As naturalist Charles Darwin penned in his The Power of Movement in Plants, “It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the tip of the radicle thus endowed . . . acts like the brain . . . ; the brain being situated within the anterior end of the body, receiving impressions from the sense-organs, and directing the several movements.” Tucking their head down in the safe darkness and anonymity deep beneath the turf, the radicle riotously flings their white sinewy arms into the superficial dirt and spreads their green leafy legs into the air. And then they walk. Walk the air. Walk the sky. Walk over the face of the sun. They walk a circumnutating trail and think — think about how the world looks from this angle, from that distance, from above, beneath, and aside. Their imbibition is a conduit for imbrication; the crack in the soaked seed coat from which the radicle first peers is the prerequisite for the curious walk by which edges of distinction overlap, layers of perception form, and networks of realization grow. When next it rains, we must pause beneath the sky to soak our woolen coats. Then we will stand on our heads and step our legs across the clouds.
Perhaps more aimed at a niche audience (of which I am not ultimately a member), I certainly admired this book, without completely connecting with its content.
December 11, 2022
A great topic from a pair of fantastic minds, but I found the writing so flowery it felt like a chore to read.
May 14, 2022
Curious Minds, from twins Perry Zurn and Dani S Bassett, is an intriguing examination of curiosity and a more connected way of thinking about it than is usual.
I found myself reading and nodding along, so much of what they say are things we might (sorta) already think or know, but not in the way they present them. In other words, they connect these ideas and approaches in different ways, often in different ways within the same chapter. They ask us, yes, genuinely ask us, to consider whether some idea might be one thing or another, or perhaps something altogether different. If you are the type of person who is curious and is always applying ideas from one area in a different area, you will find yourself in deep discussion with this book. If there is a danger, it is that the reader may go off on so many thought trains that they might not make it back to the station. But that is just fine, do what I did, reread the book and take a few more trips.
One thought came to me several times while reading. When I taught I used to tell students not to just understand the text they were reading but to think about it in relation to other topics and areas. I asked them to synthesize what they were reading in my course with what they were doing in other courses, and even with what they did in their free time. In a way this is similar, be curious and make connections, don't worry too much about what imaginary lines you're crossing. A nice example was a paper on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde using Le Chatelier's Principle as a frame.
I would highly recommend this to those who want to know more about how we think curiosity works as well as those who want some prompts for thinking on your own. This is truly an interactive book.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
I found myself reading and nodding along, so much of what they say are things we might (sorta) already think or know, but not in the way they present them. In other words, they connect these ideas and approaches in different ways, often in different ways within the same chapter. They ask us, yes, genuinely ask us, to consider whether some idea might be one thing or another, or perhaps something altogether different. If you are the type of person who is curious and is always applying ideas from one area in a different area, you will find yourself in deep discussion with this book. If there is a danger, it is that the reader may go off on so many thought trains that they might not make it back to the station. But that is just fine, do what I did, reread the book and take a few more trips.
One thought came to me several times while reading. When I taught I used to tell students not to just understand the text they were reading but to think about it in relation to other topics and areas. I asked them to synthesize what they were reading in my course with what they were doing in other courses, and even with what they did in their free time. In a way this is similar, be curious and make connections, don't worry too much about what imaginary lines you're crossing. A nice example was a paper on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde using Le Chatelier's Principle as a frame.
I would highly recommend this to those who want to know more about how we think curiosity works as well as those who want some prompts for thinking on your own. This is truly an interactive book.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
December 23, 2022
Note: I received a copy of this through a Goodreads giveaway.
Rating: 3.0 stars
I was confused about the intended audience for this book. The introduction suggested that this was a book for everyone, but the writing wasn't accessible. I'm used to pop-academic writing from a variety of disciplines, and the hallmark of that is usually clarity, sometimes to the expense of nuance. But this writing was flowery (but in a kind of dry, academic way, rather than a perhaps-overwritten-but-excuseable-because-beautiful way). And the point that was being conveyed was quite confusing and disjointed (though calculatedly so, in the sense of the emphasis on "de-disciplined" curiosity).
To the extent that this book was intended for an academic audience -- it was written by two professors and published by a university press, but that's not conclusive -- I don't know that there was enough there to make this even a refinement of the preexisting state of academic thought in these areas. Though perhaps there's something revelatory that I missed because I was confused about the point of this endeavor for a fair bit of the time.
All that said, there were aspects of this that I liked. The authors know their stuff. Some of the referenced studies and anecdotes were very compelling. And I do think it's valuable to explore without falling prey to the dictates of what falls in a particular field of study and to reexamine what it means to be curious. But I think the book fell into the academic trap of creating new labels for old ideas. And that can be ok if those new labels make those ideas more acccessible rather than less so, but I don't know that they did.
Basically, these authors are experts in their respective fields, and where that shone through, I think there was value in this. But overall, I found it to be a bit of a muddle.
Rating: 3.0 stars
I was confused about the intended audience for this book. The introduction suggested that this was a book for everyone, but the writing wasn't accessible. I'm used to pop-academic writing from a variety of disciplines, and the hallmark of that is usually clarity, sometimes to the expense of nuance. But this writing was flowery (but in a kind of dry, academic way, rather than a perhaps-overwritten-but-excuseable-because-beautiful way). And the point that was being conveyed was quite confusing and disjointed (though calculatedly so, in the sense of the emphasis on "de-disciplined" curiosity).
To the extent that this book was intended for an academic audience -- it was written by two professors and published by a university press, but that's not conclusive -- I don't know that there was enough there to make this even a refinement of the preexisting state of academic thought in these areas. Though perhaps there's something revelatory that I missed because I was confused about the point of this endeavor for a fair bit of the time.
All that said, there were aspects of this that I liked. The authors know their stuff. Some of the referenced studies and anecdotes were very compelling. And I do think it's valuable to explore without falling prey to the dictates of what falls in a particular field of study and to reexamine what it means to be curious. But I think the book fell into the academic trap of creating new labels for old ideas. And that can be ok if those new labels make those ideas more acccessible rather than less so, but I don't know that they did.
Basically, these authors are experts in their respective fields, and where that shone through, I think there was value in this. But overall, I found it to be a bit of a muddle.
August 23, 2023
I got this after enjoying the authors’ comments in a podcast interview, and there are some points I want to sit with, kick around some more. But the book itself is nearly impossible. I wish I could recommend it, but I can’t.
June 22, 2022
This is a very interesting exploration of the topic. Never seen anything like it. It's well-written and conceived. The visuals add some value as well. Recommended.
Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!
Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!
Read
March 10, 2023So much flower writing I couldn't see the ground - DNF
April 27, 2024
A book on curiosity by a philosopher and a neuroscientist. I think it’s funny how much this advertises itself as a digestible self help book; even in the book, chapters will start along the lines of, “We’re going to take a fun turn and perform an imaginative exercise on a curiosity-based education.” And then it proceeds with the extremely dense academic rigmarole of deconstructing definitions, turning over evidence, exploring semantics, and arguing the relevance of inter-disciplinary fields. That is not a problem for me; I am a nerd and like reading academic literature for fun. But just a heads up, if this looks fun to you and you’re considering reading it, it’s not a “fun” read. Most of the pages are filled with analyzing previous conceptions of curiosity from classical philosophy and modernist literature, explaining network science and how how it’s being applied to neural pathways, and making definitional arguments for curiosity as a network-based system. That being said, it’s super interesting. Takes a second for the relevance to dawn on you, why viewing curiosity as a connection network and not information acquisition more accurately represents its shape and behavior. I was exploring Chicago a couple days into reading and realized my aim had been to acquire information on the shops and centers in a new neighborhood (information acquisition). But as I did so, I noticed myself making a mental grid of the streets, connecting shops to ones seen in other neighborhoods, comparing prices, and noticing similarities in street art (connection network). Chicago, already a huge grid, developed further branches in a complex network.
I think I picked this up to get inspired and re-affirmed regarding curiosity as one of my primary values. In retrospect, I realize how much those expectations were shaped by the cheap, artificial victories self help is designed to make you feel. What I got instead was a deeper and more logical understanding of what curiosity looks like in the brain — how it acts and what it’s shaped like. None of this would be good info for a TED talk, and maybe that’s good thing.
I think I picked this up to get inspired and re-affirmed regarding curiosity as one of my primary values. In retrospect, I realize how much those expectations were shaped by the cheap, artificial victories self help is designed to make you feel. What I got instead was a deeper and more logical understanding of what curiosity looks like in the brain — how it acts and what it’s shaped like. None of this would be good info for a TED talk, and maybe that’s good thing.
April 3, 2024
This book talked about curiosity and how we make connections in/about/with the world around us. Your curiosity behaviors can be categorized into three categories: busybody, hunter, or dancer; this influences how you seek information and how you make connections throughout your knowledge base. It was incredibly well-researched and very scientific in its approach, but with hints of humor and approachability that made it a good listen. Although, now that I'm flipping through the print book, I feel that I might have missed some of the more salient points because I did not have access to the diagrams, charts, and illustrations. I am grateful that my favorite audiobook narrator, Daniel Henning, records texts such as these because if this was an assigned reading for school, my eyes would have glazed over. It's just A LOT of information, but still very interesting and insightful to read/listen to.
May 29, 2022
I think this was beautifully written. Taking into movement and connection building and drawing it all back to mental health. The writing is so artistic and inspirational.
May 14, 2024
I appreciated their closing chapters discussing neurodiversity and cultivating learning environments that work for everyone so that more people can enjoy a life of curiosity. However, this was a really difficult read. I had to skim some chapters, only fully reading the first and last paragraphs of each section. The authors are very smart and well educated, but their writing was a little too fancy and rhetorical for me to really get into the book. Shelving this for a time when I feel drawn to it, or dare I say curious about the details.
September 2, 2022
In CURIOUS MINDS, Perry Turn and Dani S. Bassett have gone wide, deep, and poetic in exploring a powerful human drive: curiosity. With lyrical prose supported by deep scientific and historical insight, they extol the opportunities in growing, developing, and utilizing an often-overlooked and dismissed ability to imagine, to explore, and to keep asking questions. I learned a great deal, felt understood for my own insatiable curiosity, and was encouraged to go deep, go long, and question. My only caution regarding this novel is the extremely conceptual and high level of discussing a fascinating topic; their flights and swerves of thought may be off-putting to a typical reader. Another more user-friendly and accessible book on this subject would be welcome. I received an early copy of this book and these opinions are my own, unbiased thoughts.
January 18, 2024
I really like the ideas that this book is talking about, but it's told in this manner that means that practically no one is ever going to read this book because its wildly pretentiously academic and thus it's just written for other people who reside in this specific academic world, I always find this disappointing, ideas deserve a larger audience than this small group of people in their castles and thus this interesting deconstruction of curiosity in which I saw really great ideas/research will stay locked away. This book particularly maddened me because it spoke a lot about inclusivity and a broad world approach to their studies, but then wrote in the least inclusive manner ever. Boring
February 25, 2024
This is a book written by twins high up in an ivory tower who thought they would step outside and write a book for the masses - and failed miserably. The idea that they are breaking new ground through the concept that curiosity involves finding connections between things in a network is laughable. I'm sure they are great academics and have provided new insights in their narrow fields, but this book is not one of them.
March 30, 2024
The contents of the book were great. Curiosity as the act of moving through and building networks. The book crosses many disciplinary domains and forms of writing, which I very much enjoyed. Many thoughts and ideas were provoked by it. And yet it felt too exploitative (in the exploration-exploitation sense) in very many passages, and the monotone audiobook reader mangling many of the non-American names was not conveying the right excitement for the ideas.
January 22, 2023
An endlessly interesting exploration of curiosity from multiple perspectives. The book is authored by twins who share a unique view of the world, and it was an unexpected pleasure to see how their voices blend together and diverge throughout the book.
A wonderful read for scientists, psychologists, and philosophers who are interested in learning more about the human experience
A wonderful read for scientists, psychologists, and philosophers who are interested in learning more about the human experience
February 22, 2025
Wanted to like it because I’m interested in the topic and the authors, but I couldn’t connect with the writing style. It felt redundant yet still superficial, more like a collection of references than a deep dive into the topic (at least the way I was expecting). Still learned a thing or 2 and actually enjoyed the Appendix: A Curious Bestiary.
Want to read
December 4, 2022I received this book for free through Goodreads Giveaways.
July 31, 2023
Fascinating!!
March 6, 2025
Two academics, identical twins - one a neuroscientist, the other a philosopher, collaborate on a book about curiosity.
I am interested in this topic. I teach a big general education course, and I believe that building a rich sense of curiosity in my students is one of the best things I could hope to achieve.
Their argument (to the extent I understand it) is that curiosity is better understood as ways of building connections between ideas (edgework) rather than a hunger to acquire new facts. How this process works can be characterized in terms of different styles: a busybody tries to know everything, a hunter seeks out their goal purposefully, and a dancer tries to make new types of connection by leaping over great distances. We should explore curiosity as a tool to break down structures and find new connections. However, curiosity amongst marginalized groups is undervalued and often dismissed as irrelevant.
I failed completely with this book.
The first thing that stopped me with the book was the style. I think the authors see themselves as being playful, but it came across to me as forced and pompous. When I heard another stream of alliteration, I found myself rolling my eyes. The examples given are often so obscure and demonstrate little (to me) beyond the breadth of the authors’ educations. I will resist quoting. It’s difficult being repelled by style, as it makes it hard to appreciate the substance; and I didn’t appreciate the substance. I’ve read other books that I only got a fraction of but feel I should return to learn more - The Brothers Karamazov, Eichmann in Jerusalem, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Here I didn’t understand and don’t want to return. There may be great wisdom here and, if so, it’s my loss.
The second thing that gave me pause was their use of academic expertise- especially in brain imaging and network theory - to develop an understanding of curiosity. Lots of academic specialists have found wisdom in their fields and used it to illustrate broader questions – economists, evolutionary biologists and thermodynamicists (?) are particularly guilty. However, the best of them recognizes that what they are doing is thinking with analogies and use them in an illuminating way. I didn’t get that modesty here, and I didn’t get much from the forms of expertise used. Brain imaging is particularly frustrating, you “explain” a commonsense notion in terms of brain structures and what have you learned? In this context, not much more than vocabulary. Similarly, network science can give a way of modelling human thought but it’s only a model. Just because your model has nodes (fixed points, facts) and edges (connections) doesn’t mean that human understanding is actually like that.
Third, the forms of curiosity they are interested in are almost exclusively academic and in the context of pedagogy. I suspect much more curiosity is simply people being interested in other people, and a broader view of the topic might have been illuminating.
Finally, they are so committed to their (very worthy) vision of disruptive curiosity as a route to liberation, particularly through their dancer analogy, that they weren’t willing to weigh the value of discipline and disciplines. Breaking down established connections can give us wonderful new ways of looking at the world, but it can also just break stuff.
Curiosity is interesting and a topic and one we should think about more as educators. A discussion of the forms and values of curiosity, particularly from a sociological or psychological perspective, would be a good place to start. Someone charmed by the style would get more out of this book I'm sure.
I am interested in this topic. I teach a big general education course, and I believe that building a rich sense of curiosity in my students is one of the best things I could hope to achieve.
Their argument (to the extent I understand it) is that curiosity is better understood as ways of building connections between ideas (edgework) rather than a hunger to acquire new facts. How this process works can be characterized in terms of different styles: a busybody tries to know everything, a hunter seeks out their goal purposefully, and a dancer tries to make new types of connection by leaping over great distances. We should explore curiosity as a tool to break down structures and find new connections. However, curiosity amongst marginalized groups is undervalued and often dismissed as irrelevant.
I failed completely with this book.
The first thing that stopped me with the book was the style. I think the authors see themselves as being playful, but it came across to me as forced and pompous. When I heard another stream of alliteration, I found myself rolling my eyes. The examples given are often so obscure and demonstrate little (to me) beyond the breadth of the authors’ educations. I will resist quoting. It’s difficult being repelled by style, as it makes it hard to appreciate the substance; and I didn’t appreciate the substance. I’ve read other books that I only got a fraction of but feel I should return to learn more - The Brothers Karamazov, Eichmann in Jerusalem, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Here I didn’t understand and don’t want to return. There may be great wisdom here and, if so, it’s my loss.
The second thing that gave me pause was their use of academic expertise- especially in brain imaging and network theory - to develop an understanding of curiosity. Lots of academic specialists have found wisdom in their fields and used it to illustrate broader questions – economists, evolutionary biologists and thermodynamicists (?) are particularly guilty. However, the best of them recognizes that what they are doing is thinking with analogies and use them in an illuminating way. I didn’t get that modesty here, and I didn’t get much from the forms of expertise used. Brain imaging is particularly frustrating, you “explain” a commonsense notion in terms of brain structures and what have you learned? In this context, not much more than vocabulary. Similarly, network science can give a way of modelling human thought but it’s only a model. Just because your model has nodes (fixed points, facts) and edges (connections) doesn’t mean that human understanding is actually like that.
Third, the forms of curiosity they are interested in are almost exclusively academic and in the context of pedagogy. I suspect much more curiosity is simply people being interested in other people, and a broader view of the topic might have been illuminating.
Finally, they are so committed to their (very worthy) vision of disruptive curiosity as a route to liberation, particularly through their dancer analogy, that they weren’t willing to weigh the value of discipline and disciplines. Breaking down established connections can give us wonderful new ways of looking at the world, but it can also just break stuff.
Curiosity is interesting and a topic and one we should think about more as educators. A discussion of the forms and values of curiosity, particularly from a sociological or psychological perspective, would be a good place to start. Someone charmed by the style would get more out of this book I'm sure.
April 27, 2024
These sibling authors give us an example of what is possible if we combine networking theory and neuroscience and pedagogy. Really, though, it defies my facile description: it must be read!
This was a book to be savoured and to take on a walk. You can be that person you sometimes see in your neighborhood or, say, campus, holding a book in front of them while ambulating. It might make some take a double take (and it deserves a re-read down the line once you have let it sink in). This, I say, for both the ambulating reader person I have just described and the book.
It is academic and detailed. It is about words, metaphors, and many overlapping fields from ecology and mycology to neuroscience. The science writing is not particularly dumbed down or rendered in layperson's terms, though the book also offers a crash-course style overview of several key and intertwining points the co-authors address. It has a kind of through-line from one chapter to the next, a unique tour of our brains, ourselves, and our human-filtered world while touching on multiple disciplines, and calling for the overthrow of strict boundaries between 'the disciplines.' (In the back is a very sweet portrait of animals noted for their being considered by our species to have 'curiosity,' too.) If you read the whole book, that section is a fine way to finish a really good library find.
I loved finding a book on interdisciplinary thinking and couldn't wait to learn what it seemed to be teaching. It delivered on its promise (and its premise). It was fun to follow along as the authors make an effort to be playful with their phrasing, quite fittingly, as it covers the need for us to allow ideas to interplay. It is beautiful and purposeful prose, and not purple prose at all.
The book also speaks of ways its reading community might become allies; it urges us to bring into our own minds greater freedom and to translate that to a greater, wider Earth-scale knowledge-base by getting curious about how others are curious. It wants us to grow up as a species and allow other types of beings and their curiosity to shape the 'cannon.' It is a call for more inclusivity, more living, thinking, and acting on the edge. The authors remind us that Leonardo DaVinci, the archetype of the Renaissance man, was somewhat illiterate in terms of the hegemonic forms of 'literacy' that were assumed for those of his times/and place. Classical learning meant reading Greek. Apparently, he didn't. He was, instead, one of those outlyer brains who was not with the herd. And, he made waves that are still reverberating in the world!
These days, we are letting all kinds of Leonardos' ways of thinking 'different' die on the vine. We could be paying more attention to what in corporate circles is called 'silofication' and to open up teams, school curriculum, etc., to nonconforming viewpoints, umwelts. Practical benefits would be a not-yet-revealed new world full of inventions yet to be imagined. The shutting down of curiosity that is unpalatably strange or outside the cannon robs us of solutions and limits us and the world we could bring into being.
The authors would have us embrace edgework in thought, and deed, for us to realize the gift that is offered by those who may be neuroatypical, or simply those who want to champion and promote seemingly unrelated (or unrelatable) phenomena in the world. I think we have all met (or even been) someone who has a passionate interest that they want to devote their lifework to. They would have a world and support the theory that knowledge and the good of the world could be expanded if we were to answer the call of curiosity. The current state of things is, all too often such expansion is stifled and blocked, and these "intellectual nodes" and the curious individuals at them receive automatic dismissal for not being relevant or valid--or 'in the club.'
This was a book to be savoured and to take on a walk. You can be that person you sometimes see in your neighborhood or, say, campus, holding a book in front of them while ambulating. It might make some take a double take (and it deserves a re-read down the line once you have let it sink in). This, I say, for both the ambulating reader person I have just described and the book.
It is academic and detailed. It is about words, metaphors, and many overlapping fields from ecology and mycology to neuroscience. The science writing is not particularly dumbed down or rendered in layperson's terms, though the book also offers a crash-course style overview of several key and intertwining points the co-authors address. It has a kind of through-line from one chapter to the next, a unique tour of our brains, ourselves, and our human-filtered world while touching on multiple disciplines, and calling for the overthrow of strict boundaries between 'the disciplines.' (In the back is a very sweet portrait of animals noted for their being considered by our species to have 'curiosity,' too.) If you read the whole book, that section is a fine way to finish a really good library find.
I loved finding a book on interdisciplinary thinking and couldn't wait to learn what it seemed to be teaching. It delivered on its promise (and its premise). It was fun to follow along as the authors make an effort to be playful with their phrasing, quite fittingly, as it covers the need for us to allow ideas to interplay. It is beautiful and purposeful prose, and not purple prose at all.
The book also speaks of ways its reading community might become allies; it urges us to bring into our own minds greater freedom and to translate that to a greater, wider Earth-scale knowledge-base by getting curious about how others are curious. It wants us to grow up as a species and allow other types of beings and their curiosity to shape the 'cannon.' It is a call for more inclusivity, more living, thinking, and acting on the edge. The authors remind us that Leonardo DaVinci, the archetype of the Renaissance man, was somewhat illiterate in terms of the hegemonic forms of 'literacy' that were assumed for those of his times/and place. Classical learning meant reading Greek. Apparently, he didn't. He was, instead, one of those outlyer brains who was not with the herd. And, he made waves that are still reverberating in the world!
These days, we are letting all kinds of Leonardos' ways of thinking 'different' die on the vine. We could be paying more attention to what in corporate circles is called 'silofication' and to open up teams, school curriculum, etc., to nonconforming viewpoints, umwelts. Practical benefits would be a not-yet-revealed new world full of inventions yet to be imagined. The shutting down of curiosity that is unpalatably strange or outside the cannon robs us of solutions and limits us and the world we could bring into being.
The authors would have us embrace edgework in thought, and deed, for us to realize the gift that is offered by those who may be neuroatypical, or simply those who want to champion and promote seemingly unrelated (or unrelatable) phenomena in the world. I think we have all met (or even been) someone who has a passionate interest that they want to devote their lifework to. They would have a world and support the theory that knowledge and the good of the world could be expanded if we were to answer the call of curiosity. The current state of things is, all too often such expansion is stifled and blocked, and these "intellectual nodes" and the curious individuals at them receive automatic dismissal for not being relevant or valid--or 'in the club.'
March 22, 2024
Fantastic read. Insightful and full of great information that gave me plenty to work on for myself in my daily life.
It's a great flowing read. Nothing too complicated. A bit cheesy at times but that was okay with me. I expect this from self help style books. So much to gain from learning about the power of connection. Useful for my life outside of the house and even great within my family. I never realized how much work I needed for myself and what valuable information I could gather from this book.
Big thanks to Perry Zurn and the good people of GoodReads. I won this book via giveaway. I received, read, and reviewed this book voluntarily and honestly.
It's a great flowing read. Nothing too complicated. A bit cheesy at times but that was okay with me. I expect this from self help style books. So much to gain from learning about the power of connection. Useful for my life outside of the house and even great within my family. I never realized how much work I needed for myself and what valuable information I could gather from this book.
Big thanks to Perry Zurn and the good people of GoodReads. I won this book via giveaway. I received, read, and reviewed this book voluntarily and honestly.
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