Curious Minds: The Power of Connection

Description

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 connection: 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. Contents Preface: Our Story A Brief Note on Visual Media Introduction: A New Vantage Point Curiosity across the Ages Footpaths and Flight Ways Oscillations Whys and Wherefores 1 The Science of Curiosity Curiosity and the Scientific Method Curiosity and the Parts of a Scientific Question The Scientific Study of Curiosity Mind or Brain? The Neuroscience of Curiosity 2 Curiosity as Edgework Curiosity as Nodal Acquisition Curiosity as Edgework Edgework in Action 3 The Network Paradigm Painting Networks Thinking Networks Building Networks 4 Curiosity’s Got Style A Note on Modeling Style #1: The Busybody Style #2: The Hunter Style #3: The Dancer Three Styles, One Life 5 Webs of Knowledge Knowledge as Continuous versus Discrete Knowledge as a Network Walking on Knowledge Networks Learning Knowledge Networks Building a Laboratory for Network Learning What Are People Thinking? Information Processing in Real Networks Understanding Networks or the Principles behind Networks? Walking Samely, Walking Differently 6 Curiosity Takes a Walk Asking, Ambling The Philosophical Walk The Spiritual Walk The Environmental Walk The Political Walk Thought in Motion 7 Your Brain on Curiosity Rules of the Road Making Harmony Where Is a Single Melody? Where Do We Build a Fully Musical Language? Where Are Networks Coded? Flexibility and Learning The Flexibility of Practice 8 Reimagining Education From Particles to Patterns Dots Out of Line: On Neuroatypical Curiosity Soul Power: On Curiosity at the Margins No Such Thing: On Curiosity De-­disciplined From Patterns to Pedagogy Conclusion: On Curious Futures Curiously Cracking Appendix: A Curious Bestiary Acknowledgments Notes Preface Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Conclusion Appendix Index