Where Curiosity Sits
Without curiosity we tread on the spot, with her we venture into risky terrain. One area of the brain seems to be responsible for this.
Actually strange, where everywhere we colloquially locate the seat of curiosity. For example in the olfactory organ: professional snoopers, we think, have a shady job, because they stick their noses into everything. Or does it lurk in the sense of sight? The ancient church father Augustine blamed curiosity as sinful lust for the eyes. Still other moralizers did not see curiosity at work visually, but rather acoustically, when little men and women put their heads together to gossip about the absent to their hearts' content.
In any case, an unrestrained thirst for knowledge was traditionally considered a vice. At the beginning of the 20th century, the philosopher Martin Heidegger degraded "curiosity" alongside "talk" and "ambiguity" to inferior behavior: it was a "decay of existence". should actually enjoy the elementary driving force of science.
Curious as they are, researchers recently asked themselves: Where in our heads does the risky search for the unknown originate? …
