Abstract
One feature of the public responses to the current pandemic that has received little to no serious attention to date relates to the public’s seemingly limited understanding about science. Many public reactions have been hyperbolic and, in part, reflect a lack of understanding about learning itself. It some respects, these reactions reflect how both education and science have been introduced to children early on when learning goals are established. Mastery of basic tools and structures has been posed as goals for excellence. For many, what one learns provides the platform for judging capacity and success, usually measured by the mastery of “facts”. However, the achievement thrust of this model can easily omit, ignore, or even downplay important accompanying elements contributing to how one understands what is learned. The how includes elements of curiosity and humility that are fundamental to integrating the what that is learned. Curiosity triggers learning, and humility contextualizes that which is learned.
Beginning in infancy, curiosity generates both actions and thoughts that, if successful, become integrated learning. Inventors understand this. Curiosity often leads to trial and error again and again until it leads to a reasonable and possibly usable outcomes. Errors are not failures. They are natural outcomes of curiously generated experiments. Such outcomes become the building blocks for further experiments. Inventors, though possibly frustrated, humbly recognize that most outcomes are temporal and that curiosity might prompt to further tuning and experimentations. People are frequently curious about similar questions. Thus, Euclid’s geometry model was the result of one person’s curiosity, but other non-Euclidian models emerged stimulated by similar questions. The currently evolving educational model of an inverted classroom is designed to promote integrated learn by harnessing students’ innate curiosities. Group processing supports a context of humility as information is shared.
Both the sciences and the humanities are built upon a shared platform of integrated curiosity. Two historians can write books on the same topic using the same sources but come to different emphases or conclusions. Two scientists can be curious about the same problem, use similar models and tools, and emerge with different outcomes, benefits, and limitations. As such, ongoing analysis, assessment, and critique are always invited because humility understands that there may be many ways to address both common and related issues. Openness and ongoing critique enhance the learning process rather that curtail it.
Such learning understands singular models and absolute-forever outcomes and solutions as temporal, always ripe for modification. However, if the basic model of learning fails to generate curiosity and incorporate humility by providing singular answers and models, true learning is lost and an arrogance loyalty to fixed outcomes becomes normalized.
Current efforts to develop therapeutics and vaccines for the SARS-CoV-2 virus take place amid the context of both curiosity and humility. Many vaccines and therapeutics may ultimately emerge, some more effective in some ways than others. All will likely have merit over time since the scientists will have learned so much more about viruses that will then provide the building blocks for further research. Scientists learn that what they might regard as an experimental failure also informs the next journeys that their curiosity may take them. A similar process is fundamental in the humanities. For example, historians, curious about earlier conclusions, engage in investigations that may lead them to newer understandings that differ from early reports. Singular conclusions are limitedly authoritative. This understanding led historian R.G. Collingwood to note that it is the historian who confers authority on his or her text. 1
Uncomfortable with uncertainties, many people prefer simple answers to complex questions. They have not been provided the opportunity to learn in an environment that incorporates teaching the learning process and encourages each person to develop curiosity in the subjects being taught. Memorizing details, trends, and formulas only provide the structures for channeling curiosity; they do not represent actual integrated learning. Hence, it becomes hard to recognize and understand the complexities inherent in most of life’s endeavors.
Pastoral and Spiritual counselors, Chaplains, and other such professionals face these realities daily as people come to them with complex issues and wishes for clear, simple answers along with personal support. Counselors have learned that their primary professional tools are listening and curiosity, humbly honoring the seekers and supporting them as they begin to unravel the complexities of their circumstance and gain sufficient curiosity to explore them in depth and from that exploration develop alternatives and possible solutions. Training in these professions stress the importance of these elements for personal growth as well as the capacity to support others seeking their guidance.
Articles in this issue invite readers to read the results of others curiosity and possibly trigger the reader’s own curiosity for further endeavors of their own.