Curious Minds: The Power of Connection

Committed to reducing the social inequalities and loosening the traditional disciplinary boundaries that subtend the academy, we aim to facilitate freedom for everyone’s curiosity to pursue seemingly incommensurable ideas and applications.

It is not insignificant that the English language is 70 percent nouns, while Potawatomi is 70 percent verbs.

This is the sort of curiosity that is edge driven, not only learning what and how things belong, but also building heretofore unimaginable lines of belonging. It is inquisitiveness untethered to acquisition.

Perhaps curiosity is valuable in its potentiality (as opposed to its actuality),

In some sense, scientific inquiry is thus an effort to become inhuman. Or perhaps nonhuman. Or perhaps superhuman.

We believe so heartily that curiosity is crucial to societal achievement, moreover, that we have spent little energy in cultivating its attunement with societal generosity.

In posing and seeking answers to these questions, scientists are often driven by distinct goals. Some scientists are most compelled by utilitarian values.

What you have before you, then, is truly a collective effort. The ideas developed here could not have germinated or borne fruit without us thinking together—that is, without our relationship. We practiced curiosity collectively, connecting philosophy and neuroscience, literature and psychology, social justice and network science, so as to build a s

It cannot be one thing, located in one place, practiced by one person, in the pursuit of one piece of information. But if not one, then what? What would it mean to rethink curiosity from a relational or even a network perspective? To take up the art of forming and fashioning the concept of curiosity anew?

Perhaps we wish to understand curiosity simply because it is curious. It is strange, puzzling, and mystifying. We cock our head in a quizzical stare. What is this oddity before us?