Chapter 8
Man and Curiosity
The observation of man would present a visitor from outer
space with many problems. Let us imagine that an invisible spaceship has
landed on a snowcapped peak in the Alps, and that its occupants are gazing
down on a winter resort in the valley. They are confronted by the sight
of human beings trudging or riding up the white slopes and then gliding
downhill with monotonous regularity. Our unseen visitors may be forgiven
for pondering on the significance of such actions.
The earth creatures cannot be looking for food – that
would seem obvious. There is nothing edible on the slopes, only snow and
rock, so the purpose of all this- bustle and activity is obscure. Animals
sometimes gather at a preordained spot for mating purposes, but can this
apply here? Although the figures hurrying up and down the slopes are moving
in pairs or groups, their movements seem to betoken a different intention.
But what intention? What do they gain by such an expenditure of energy?
Such were the questions suggested to us by films which
we had shot in Sankt Christoph am Arlberg and projected at ten times the
actual speed. We have grown so accustomed to the sight of sporting activities
at normal speed that they seldom impress us as a specifically human peculiarity.
As everyone knows, part of their raison d'être is the product of
rational deliberation
on the part of the sportsman, who desires to develop
his phy-
(original book page 88)
sique and stay healthy. There are also prizes to be won
and other people to be impressed, but that does not exhaust the list of
motives. What underlies such activities is something else, something instinctive:
a need to acquire new abilities, to try out new aptitudes – an urge to
step outside the confines of everyday life, a desire for change and novelty.
Another scene: the Acropolis at Athens. Here again we
filmed visitors' comings and goings and projected them at ten times the
actual speed, and here again our film gave us food for thought. The visitor
from outer space would again be puzzled by the expenditure of energy. People
had traveled long distances – even crossed oceans – to see something which
was of no practical benefit to them. Why? There is an instinctive element
in tourism too: a yearning to abandon one's normal habitat, break the bounds
of one's accustomed sphere, and acquire new impressions – a desire for
change and novelty.
On the beach at Nice I filmed a young man who was sitting
reading the paper surrounded by bathers. Again accelerated projection afforded
some entirely new insights. The young man plowed through his paper, picked
up another, plowed through that one, picked up a third, and when he had
finished it, reached for the first again. When reading newspapers and books,
we have long ceased to be aware that we are ingesting information that
has virtually no meaning for us. Conversations which we filmed all over
the world left the same impression. They had ceased to be an exchange of
relevant information and, in many cases, had become mere chatter. Novelty
is a source of pleasure to us. That is one essential reason why we are
attracted by public functions and lured by theater, cinema, and the television
screen. We yearn for variety. We want to step outside the cramped confines
of daily life, at least in our imagination. Our senses thirst for new impressions.
We are animated by an urge, a craving, for novelty – in a word, by curiosity.
Is this a special characteristic which distinguishes
us from animals? Yes, but only in part. Many animals display similar instinctive
behavior, though usually only until they attain sexual maturity.
As we have already mentioned, all creatures which acquire
I part of their behavior by learning possess an innate urge to
(original book page 89)
grapple actively with their environment. The young rat,
the young crow, the young lion – all try out their entire behavior repertory
in play. They investigate the nature of the material objects which compose
their environment, twist and turn them, try all kinds of maneuvers with
them, and thereby acquire the experience necessary to learning by practice.
Separate hereditary coordinations, often consisting of very brief motor
sequences, are thus welded together into longer concatenations of successful
behavior.
Another noteworthy factor is, for instance, that the
urge to play takes longer to satisfy than other urges. The appetency to
play remains operative far longer than other appetencies, which soon subside
when indulged. Moreover, this fully accords with the biological purpose
of the procedure. Only by repeated practice and testing can an animal gain
the sureness of touch and movement so essential to its continued existence.
That the goal of this instinctive behavior is novelty
for its own sake emerges from observations made by Lorenz. An inquisitively
inclined creature will not be distracted from the investigation of objects
still unknown to it, even by familiar tidbits. Even when the creature is
trying out the motor patterns of eating – in other words, playing at eating-it
will give a strange practice object priority over a known delicacy. To
quote Lorenz: "Anthropomorphically speaking, the creature does not want
to eat; it wants to ´know' everything there is, ´theoretically´
to eat within its particular habitat."
Analogous instinctive behavior is clearly discernible
in the young human being. In general, the mother represents the first object
of its curiosity and play behavior. The child feels and explores her face,
thereby gaining its first conception of space. As soon as it can crawl,
it starts to explore its immediate environment. It feels objects, conveys
them to its mouth, turns them over, and thus gains experience of their
properties. Herein lies the great importance to a child of the toy, which
with primitive children often consists of no more than a stone or twig.
By handling such things the child learns how objects can be moved and how
they behave when brought into contact with each other. It learns the relationship
between cause and
(original book page 90)
effect and, at the same time, the potentialities of its
body and hands.
Curiosity and play are certainly not identical in our
linguistic usage, yet it is highly probable that both phenomena have a
common root. The difference lies merely in the fact that curiosity leads
to exploration and mastery of one's environment, whereas play leads to
exploration and mastery of new capabilities. In the first instance the
prime object is information; in the second the construction of motor patterns.
There is, however, a similar instinctive striving for novelty in both instances.
Either this is a case where two different urges are very similar in effect,
or, alternatively, the striving for new knowledge and the striving for
new ability – the first relating to sensation and the second to movement
– are operated by the same motor.
The curiosity instinct conflicts with that of fear. Curiosity
impels, fear restrains. Many of our slow-motion films of children illustrated
the resulting conflict behavior. They showed, on the one hand, how children
are tempted and challenged by their unfamiliar environment, and, on the
other, how an inner voice warns them to approach the unfamiliar with caution
and be tentative in taking new steps.
Parental protection is of decisive importance here. If
a living creature is not "complete" at birth and must first acquire vital
and indispensable skills, protection is a prerequisite of survival. Parents,
therefore, in the course of evolution, parallel with the degeneration of
instinctive control and the development of the ability to learn, must have
evolved an instinct for the preservation of their young. The one would
have been quite impossible without the other. The butterfly pays no heed
to the caterpillars that emerge from its eggs, once it has laid them. These
come into the world complete, however, and can survive without care and
protection thanks to behavior which is innate in them. The learner, on
the other hand, is dependent upon the laborious process of exploration
and practice, and in this helpless state it derives protection both from
its parents' brood-tending instinct and from its own fear. Thus the degeneration
of one set of instincts rendered it necessary to develop and strengthen
other instincts.
(original book page 91)
Accelerated films provided us with a clear illustration
of how the behavior of children and parents is mutually attuned. Mother
and child are linked as though by an invisible elastic band. As soon as
the child leaves her side, the mother reacts with anxiety – indeed, she
reacts almost constantly to the child even when otherwise occupied. Little
by little, the child ventures farther from her, explores the world around
it, tests its abilities, plays with this object or that. On beaches and
in parks we recorded how children use parents as aids to practice. They
clamber around on them, engage in trials of strength with them, and elicit
the same reactions with monotonous frequency – and their parents not only
indulge but positively encourage them. Similar behavior was observable
in baboons which we filmed under similar circumstances.
One important aspect of exploration consists in the ability
to stand aloof from the current object of interest. The human baby does
not at first possess this ability. Having once grasped an object, it conveys
it to its mouth and can only break this rigid sequence of actions with
difficulty. As the child grows older, one can see it remove the object
from its mouth, examine it, convey it to its mouth again, and then, perhaps,
discard it or grasp it with the other hand or throw it away – and so on.
Only the most intelligent learners (e.g., dogs and monkeys) show the same
ability to dissociate themselves from an object and explore it from another
angle by trying a new line of approach.
One very characteristic feature of active play is the
persistence with which new and successful actions are reiterated. Once
a child finds out how to build a tower of bricks and knock it down, it
will repeat the process. Once it has summoned the courage to slide down
a chute, it will do it again and again. Every new ability resembles a victory,
a pleasurable accretion of power. Step by step, the child conquers its
environment and brings more and more objects within its sphere of influence.
Precisely the same applies to the higher learning animals. A young badger
reared by Eibl, which had discovered how to turn somersaults in the course
of play, repeated the trick over and over again. Every series of movements
which is in any way purposive is ingrained by repetition so that the commands
in
(original book page )
the brain become firmly knit. Acquired coordinations created
in this way remain at the animal's disposal; from now on, it keeps them
in stock.
The use of surrogates, or substitutes, is also interesting.
A young lion treats its brothers and sisters as if they were prey, and
so practices preying behavior. A young polecat reared indoors by Eibl occupied
a wastepaper basket and defended it in exactly the same way as the adult
animal defends its nest. To the child, ball and sandbox are ideal substitutes,
the ball for practicing chasing, catching, and grasping; the sand for testing
the creative ability of hands – and mind.
Experimental play develops into constructive play. The
tendency to dismember things-a procedure which helps augment knowledge
of material objects – can also be observed in birds and the higher mammals.
The assembling of objects, on the other hand, is peculiar to children and
young monkeys. Lorenz writes:
It is quite astonishing what the young of the lower apes, e.g., the Capuchin (Cebus), manage to achieve during such games in the way of superimposition and insertion of objects, employment of leverage effects, and the like. Their experiments, which are intensive and betray a businesslike concentration on the matter in hand, create an almost human impression.
Is human curiosity and play behavior really free to take
any direction, or is the impulse, to acquire information and aptitudes
subject to definite guidelines? Are the things that a child learns during
its experimental games governed by some system of hereditarily fixed priorities?
With animals there is no doubt that games are influenced
by learning dispositions. With herbivores, to whom aggressive action is
less important than escape from predators, flight games predominate. With
predators, hunting and fighting games take precedence. When, with children,
we note that girls incline toward dolls while boys favor climbing (fruit
seeking) and playing with weapons (hunting), we are acknowledging a division
of interests which is obviously influenced by heredity. Playing house is
typical of young human beings – boys and girls alike. To the physically
vulnerable human being, the creation of a
(original book page 93)
suitable place of refuge is of special importance, so
it is not surprising that we developed a play preference in this direction.
Of course, games are also strongly influenced by adult activities and cultural
traditions. "Fashions," which determine the course of individual games,
have been demonstrated in monkeys and other animals. The imitative urge,
which is strongly developed in many learners, plays an equally important
role in young human beings. It impels them to adopt motor patterns observed
in their parents. Even the so-called spells of defiance, to which we shall
return later, may possibly derive from hereditarily fixed learning dispositions.
What the child is learning here – also in play, although it seems entirely
serious – is how to pit its own will against that of its parents. The growing
creature is developing individuality and independence, the ability to assess
alternatives and form decisions, which is so important to its continued
existence.
There is, however, a substantial difference between animal
and human being in this respect. Inquisitive behavior wanes or disappears
completely in all learners after sexual maturity. This is not the case
with human beings, who retain most of their youthful curiosity until old
age. We remain interested in novelty and the possibility of change. As
the German sociologist Gehlen put it, the human being remains "open to
the world."
Once a learner-a wolf or lion, for example-attains maturity,
it has acquired all the aptitudes important to survival and displays no
impulse to acquire more. The animals is, as it were, embedded in a particular
environment and mode of existence and shows no desire to break bounds.
Men are different in this respect. Proceeding from our ancestors' original
tropical habitat, we populated the entire globe, tried our luck virtually
everywhere, and when conditions were unsatisfactory, created an artificial
environment suitable to our needs. This development would certainly have
been impossible had it not been for our superior intelligence, yet our
persistent inquisitive urge must surely have made a substantial contribution.
This was the motor which impelled us to take an interest in novelty. This
was what invested us with the basic readiness to grapple with very changed
circumstances and master them in a new way.
(original book page 94)
The urge to defy difficulty or danger finds particular
expression in sporting activities. Many people gamble with their lives
when climbing, diving, or winter sporting. A similar tendency is apparent
in risky business ventures and in scientific research. The scientist has
always been an inquisitive, indeed, playful character. Most discoveries
and inventions have occurred because of the pronounced streak of curiosity
to be found in many individuals, not as the result of a rational and objective
striving for personal gain. It is not merely because of our intellect that
man's evolution has been marked by an endeavor to push back frontiers and
cross them, that new and often fantastic schemes and ideas have sprung
up with each succeeding generation, that we are pressing forward into space.
No, this intellect of ours is controlled by an instinctive peculiarity
which resides within us, by a force which decisively influences and guides
our will.
It is characteristic of the inquisitive urge that it
makes itself felt with particular force when no other instinctive pressure
exists, in other words, when other impulses have waned. This applies to
all learners, including man. As Schiller put it: "The animal works when
a deficiency is the mainspring of its activity and plays when the mainspring
is an abundance of strength." As long as his actions are governed, say,
by fear, hunger, or sexual desire, man is not inquisitive either. He does
not play or playfully embark upon new ventures. Only when he is without
other appetencies does he become venturesome and willful. It is then that
he feels an urge to abandon the normal pattern of existence, whatever the
alternative. It is then that the Dionysian, the daring and truly human
element in man, comes to the fore.
Experiments with songbirds have shown that they produce
their most varied and beautiful songs outside their procreative period
rather than during it. That is when they "compose," as the bird lover describes
it. Again, chimpanzees to which Morris gave brushes, paints, and canvas
produced paintings during their relaxed period, which disclosed a basic
aesthetic sense of symmetry and balance. These and similar observations
make it reasonable to assume that our play and curiosity impulse is I responsible
not only for discovery, exploration, and innovation,
(original book page 95)
but also, in large measure, for promoting our artistic
development.
In his treatise on Whole and Part in the Animal and Human
Community, Lorenz set forth the main features of inquisitive behavior-in
fact, the term Neugierwesen, or "curiosity creature," stems from him. His
point of departure was the distinction between specialized and nonspecialized
creatures. The specialists are fitted for a very specific way of life in
which they wield superiority over all rivals, whereas the nonspecialists
have the advantage of being adaptable and, thus, independent of one particular
environmental situation. Although their competitive ability may thus be
less in individual instances, they are, by way of compensation, less vulnerable
to the danger of changes in environment. Thanks to their learning capacity,
they can conform to such changes. All curiosity creatures are thoroughgoing
nonspecialists. Their behavior patterns are hereditarily fixed to only
a small degree, and their innate releasing mechanisms (IRM's) generally
respond to widespread-and thus characteristic deficient-key stimuli. They
treat everything new as if it were of supreme biological importance to
them" and so "unerringly discover, in the most varied and extreme environments,
every factor which can contribute to the preservation of their life." Man
is the most advanced of all curiosity creatures. In him, curiosity and
readiness to learn persist into old age; in him, this instinctive behavior
is carried to the extreme.
In this context, Lorenz described man as a "specialist
in nonspecialization." Like Gehlen, he sees "one of the constituent characteristics
of man-indeed, perhaps the most important of them-in his perpetually inquisitive
and exploratory confrontation with the world of material objects; in his
specifically human tendency actively to improve his own environment." We
shall return more than once to the practical form taken by such improvements.
How did it actually come about, this remarkable difference
between us and the learners related to us? How is it that this instinct
is not extinguished in us at sexual maturity? Lorenz ascribes this to two
phenomena. Both are controversial, but we shall cite them just the same.
As Bolk expounded in 1926, man has a number of "persist-
(original book page 96)
ing youthful characteristics." He listed them as the combination
of hairless body and hairy head; the superimposition of cranium upon facial
structure; the almost 90-degree relationship of the base of the skull to
the spine (together with the correspondingly advanced position of the occipital
cavity); a heavy brain (heavy in relation to body weight); various structural
features of the female sex organs; the pigmentation of the skin; and others
besides. These peculiarities are also found – a remarkable parallel – in
the early stages of development of anthropoid apes. Ape embryos are also
hairless (except for the head) and display all the other special features
enumerated above. Thus man is reminiscent of the fetus of the anthropoid
ape. In this connection, Bolk spoke of a fetalization of man – a theory
which not only attracted attention but, inevitably, aroused a great deal
of antipathy as well. To many people, the notion that we are descended
from apes was bad enough; the idea that we might, as it were, represent
an embryonic stage in the development of the anthropoid ape struck them
as grotesque.
Examples of inhibited development are not rare in the
animal world. Some creatures – crabs and Diptera and salamanders come to
mind – attain sexual maturity at a relatively early stage of development
and do not, therefore, complete the rest of a developmental cycle which
can still be clearly followed in related species. The zoologist refers
to this phenomenon as neoteny. The classic example of this is the axolotl,
a batrachian reptile in which the phenomenon can be traced to this day.
In its larval state this creature has gills and lives in water. Later it
loses its gills and develops into a land-dwelling salamander. In many cases,
the larvae attain sexual maturity. These specimens retain their gills and
remain aquatic creatures. Where such a process has become hereditary, it
has led, in the course of evolution, to the development of many new species.
Lorenz, referring to other symptoms of inhibited development
listed by Bolk, described man's persistently inquisitive behavior as an
example of neoteny. He also accounted for the occurrence of human neoteny
by construing it as a possible effect of domestication. Examples of neoteny
had earlier been demonstrated in domestic animals on the basis of various
physical characteristics. Proceeding further, Lorenz found symptoms
(original book page 97)
of neoteny in their behavior as well. Man has shielded
himself against natural selection in much the same way as he protects his
domestic animals from natural threats, and Lorenz had already pointed to
other human peculiarities which he estimated to be the outcome of this
self-domestication. On the strength of such considerations, he advanced
the theory that man's persistently inquisitive behavior is a form of neoteny
which, in turn, is a consequence of self-domestication.
The peculiarity of our inquisitive behavior emerged only
gradually in the course of evolutionary history. Our ancestors had been
using tools for a long time before they began to detach themselves from
their natural surroundings and proceed to overcome nature itself, deliberately
modify their existence and shape it artificially. Each innovation led to
a new habit, a new tradition. Passed on during the process of rearing,
these usually rigid behavior patterns themselves became antitheses of change.
Indeed, they sometimes became a self-made barrier which further inquisitive
behavior had to strive to surmount.
In the remote village of El Molo beside Lake Rudolf in
Kenya we covertly filmed children at play building "houses" with reeds
and scraps of cloth. The behavior pattern discernible in our film showed
how the children worked together and how they modeled their houses on the
local kraal. Finally, they ran off and became engrossed in some other game.
We were on the point of packing up when a little girl appeared. She stood
in front of one of the ramshackle edifices and contemplated it thoughtfully.
Then, with sudden resolution, she walked up to it, dismantled it, and tried
to convert the rags that had served as a roof into a skirt and shawl. Commonplace
as it may appear, this little incident contains the essence of what human
evolution has had to contend with, always and everywhere. Before something
new can be tried or created, often something already in existence has to
be destroyed. This applies to small things as to large and has frequently
been 'the cause of war and revolution.
However, we are not the only creatures to be faced with
this vexing problem. Practically all advanced organic development, from
the first molecular complexes to exhibit life down to mammals and human
beings, has been confronted by it.
(original book page 98)
"Without rigid structures," writes Lorenz, "no organic
system of an advanced level of integration is possible, but the structures
of the existing system must be smashed before another of a still higher
level of integration can be attained." Later he adds, "Whether a crab sheds
its shell, or a human being exchanges the personality structure of a child
for that of an adult, or an obsolete order of human society yields to a
new one, evolutionary progress is always and everywhere associated with
danger, because the old structure must be dismantled before the new one
has attained full operative capacity." Man has always been relatively more
exposed to this danger than any other creature. We are, after all, the
first and only creatures which can not only adapt but are also capable
of fundamentally changing ourselves and our own pattern of existence. Nietzsche
called man "the still unestablished animal," and Gehlen, somewhat more
accurately, called him "the creature at risk, the creature with an inherent
prospect of disaster." The alarming accuracy of the latter description
is becoming ever more apparent in today's world with its breakneck technological
advances. Never in the course of history has man hesitated to employ all
available resources in order to bring about the changes he has in mind.
Today, in the nuclear age, this indeed brings us perilously close to the
"inherent prospect of disaster."
As man gained mastery over nature, so a fateful conjunction
of cause and effect came into being. The more we guaranteed our survival,
the more leisure time we gained, and the further we penetrated the zone
of relaxation. This zone became a breeding ground for the development of
our curiosity drive, which led us on to further experiments, further ideas,
further accretions of power. A chimpanzee, Sultan, at the ape station in
Tenerife could not at first solve the problem of how to fish a banana into
its cage by fitting two sticks together. He continued to experiment with
one section or the other until he flew into a rage and gave up. Later,
while playing with sticks, he fitted them together by chance. He at once
returned to the unsolved task and hooked the banana inside. Having failed
to solve the problem under instinctive pressure, he had solved it in the
relaxed zone of play. The same must apply to many
(original book page 99)
human discoveries and inventions. Many new ideas are undoubtedly
born of necessity and despair, but there is little doubt that man evolves
many innovations in the course of leisure-time experimentation.
We tend to regard curiosity as a commonplace and sometimes
undesirable characteristic, which certainly is not a human peculiarity.
Consideration of the creatures most closely related to us reveals, nevertheless,
that it is a phenomenon to which we owe a great deal. Among our animal
kin, the instinct which permits them to adapt generally retains its efficacy
for only a few years. In man, the drive persists. Our receptiveness to
new ideas survives well beyond our sexual prime; our interest in exploring
new possibilities endures into old age. Furthermore, our mental powers
are often involved in the investigation of the outwardly trivial and meaningless,
but this often leads to the discovery of things which are most meaningful.
Once such an advance has been made, it usually asserts and establishes
itself and enters the realm of custom and tradition. But no sooner has
something new come into being than the process of change and disintegration
begins all over again. We are curiosity creatures par excellence. We are
"creatures at risk," "unestablished animals." We challenge nature even
when the odds are against us. We wend our precarious way along a knife
edge. We modify ourselves and shed our skin almost unceasingly. And at
each such skin shedding we are "in danger."