The Death of Curiosity
What Happens When We Learn Everything There Is to Know About the Human Body, Our Planet, the Universe . . . Everything?
It seems absurd to think about it now, but what happens when that day come when we know everything? The human body, demystified. The earth, revealed. The universe, decoded. Everything is known.
Will knowing everything be the death of curiosity?
The past century: an explosion of revelations in science, medicine, physics, chemistry, economics. We split the atom and ended a war with it. We saw inside the human body and discovered how to heal parts of it. We created new elements and molecules, and added whole new levels of science and technology. The entropy of a free-market society has created unprecedented wealth for a select few, unbelievable poverty for billions more.
Humans are soft-wired to be curious. It has killed some of us in the process of exploring and asking questions and demanding answers. As the bystanders witnessed the errors, they produced successful trials and unexpected results. We are designed to be curious, to explore our world, be it the oceans, the heavens and stars, or the human brain and body.
Will knowing everything be the death of curiosity?
Will there ever come a day when we know everything there is to know about . . . everything? As I think about the future, using the most dangerous tool available–the present–I wonder what that day will look like, when the last scientist answers the final question about the human mind: what does this do? And the answer is revealed in an instant. Does she then close up shop, head to the pub with the lads, and celebrate another business-as-usual event? Or does it, in itself, become the most striking Nobel moment in human history.
Will this be the death of curiosity? What will be left to ask? What will we then do, having discovered everything there is to know about everything. Will we simply then expound on and improve and change and then sit back and witness the results?
Thankfully, there will always be change, always new laws of physics to pass and implement. So there will always be something new to reveal, new questions to consider, new information to share with others. Always. Our Universe is a giant playroom with seemingly endless supplies of toys of every size, shape, color, texture, smell and taste. While I am using the “power of now” to consider this odd future, I also invoke the power of science fiction, i.e. crazy, unbridled thinking, in my queries. The very nature of nature means change, so I look forward not to a final day of discovery, but to an infinite series of new problems and dilemmas to solve.
The question then becomes: will there ever be enough time to discover it all?
