Humans have a drive to eat. We have a drive to drink. We have a drive to reproduce. Curiosity is no different, says George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. Our insatiable drive to learn—to invent, explore, and study ceaselessly—“deserves to have the same status as those other drives.”
What’s curious about curiosity, though, is that it doesn’t seem to be tied to any specific reward. “The theoretical puzzle posed by curiosity is why people are so strongly attracted to information that, by the definition of curiosity, confers no extrinsic benefit,” Loewenstein once wrote. It makes sense for organisms to seek food, water, sex, shelter, rest, wealth, or any of the other myriad nourishing and pleasant things in life. But what is the good of deducing the nature of gravity, or of going to the moon?
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