Abstract |
All of us have had the sobering experience of (really) knowing
only a few things and not knowing a great many. All of us become
painfully conscious of our intellectual limits both in private and
professional affairs, that is, conscious of what we do not know and
probably never will. Brains, it seems, have only a finite capacity
to absorb, and life is short and for that reason alone unsuited to
dreams of limitless knowledge - even ignoring the fact that one can
imagine much more pleasant activities than stuffing oneself anew
everyday with knowledge. Although Aristotle once said that all men,
by their own nature, strive for knowledge (Met. A1.980a21), he
certainly did not mean the bookworm and the secluded scholar.
Curiosity, which according to Aristotle is the form in which the
human striving for knowledge is usu-ally expressed, is more than
scientific curiosity; it asserts itself in daily life, in travel,
in ex-periencing the unusual and strange, in confronting closed
doors and keyholes.
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