When the child learns that he can appeal to others to eke out
his store of experiences, so that, if objects fail to respond
interestingly to his experiments, he may call upon persons to
provide interesting material, a new epoch sets in. “What is
that?” “Why?” become the unfailing signs of a child’s presence.
At first this questioning is hardly more than a projection into
social relations of the physical overflow which earlier kept
the child pushing and pulling, opening and shutting. He asks in
succession what holds up the house, what holds up the soil that
holds the house, what holds up the earth that holds the soil;
but his questions are not evidence of any genuine consciousness
of rational connections. His why is not a demand for scientific
explanation; the motive behind it is simply eagerness for a
larger acquaintance with the mysterious world in which he is
placed. The search is not for a law or principle, but only for a
bigger fact. Yet there is more than a desire to accumulate just
information or heap up disconnected items, altho sometimes the
interrogating habit threatens to degenerate into a mere disease
of language. In the feeling, however dim, that the facts which
directly meet the senses are not the whole story, that there is
more behind them and more to come from them, lies the germ of
intellectual curiosity.--JOHN DEWEY, “How We Think.”
(647)
=Current, Double=--See JOY AND SORROW.