Digest №12: Why Curiosity and Skepticism Are Essential to Learning, Medicine, and Science

Bless!

What are the foundations of learning? What are the very basic traits required to be able to learn a life long? And what does it mean for changing paradigms in medicine and science? These are all interesting questions, but allow me to connect them back to your healing journey in this digest.

You may well have said to yourself, that intelligence is the foundation of learning. There's a problem with that. Giving 'intelligence' as an answer just kicks the can down the road, for what makes intelligence? I've seen countless definitions of intelligence used, and the simplest and most intuitive of these was one that defined intelligence as the rate of learning, i.e. a more intelligent person will learn more quickly than a less intelligent person.

Problem with that is, that it's circular definition. We define the foundation of learning as intelligence and then define intelligence based on learning.

To make it easier for us, I think the first thing we ought to do is to define intelligence as a collection of mutable and immutable traits, whereas learning is a process, which relies on these traits and the access to novel information.

So... what makes people practically intelligent?

Well, let's look at a few people we tend to view as intelligent and see what traits they possess(ed).

An obvious candidate is Albert Einstein. He may have had a mind capable of extraordinary computational prowess. But that just means that he could think more in less time, not that the thoughts he thought were of higher quality. A less powerful computer will still be able to do all the things a more powerful computer can; it'll just take more time.

So, what made his thoughts of high quality? Why not just let him tell it to us?

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

So, his answer was to stay eternally questioning and curious? And that's it?

Well, let's do a negative test. Can we learn without questioning what we find around us? Can we learn without being curious? Say, we walk into a room and sit down for a presentation. Say, the others in the room just stand up and sit back down collectively at random intervals. Can we learn why they do it by just blindly following along? Or will we just become another useful (or useless) automaton?

The obvious answer is that the latter is true. We can't learn by inanely following along. If we want to know why these people collectively arise and seat themselves, we need to question them. We need to be curious as to the reason for it. Otherwise we'll never learn their secrets... if they have any.

This is a principle generally true in learning and any other process, which depends on it. You can't learn without being curious. But is being curious enough?

Let's go back to the room with its people randomly, but collectively, standing up and sitting back down. Is being curious about their behaviour enough? I'd say no. Being curious as to why they do it wouldn't prevent us from moving along with their odd behaviour, whilst we wonder why. Eventually, we'd be swept up in their idiocy, bereft of our curiosity, and once more we've become an automaton.

What I want to get at is the very first sentence of the above quote. 'The important thing is not to stop questioning.'

Curiosity is one part of the equation, certainly. But it will only lead you toward more knowledge. The problem with knowledge is, that it's human and thus fallible. We must, of course, seek after truth, but the answers we find will only ever be knowledge – good, but imperfect.

This is where scepsis comes in. Curiosity is asking questions, scepsis is doubting the answers you get and asking deeper questions still about them. Or as Einstein (ostensibly) put it: 'The important thing is not to stop questioning.'

For example, it was long 'known', high blood cholesterol is deadly and that 'fossil fuels' are actually dead lifeforms and not simply methane oxidised during its ascend through the earth's crust. None of these were true, just because they were known. In fact, both of them seem to be false rather than true.^2–3

I think what this has to do with learning is obvious, but perhaps the connection to medicine and science is still a bit vague.

Let's understand what the term science means at all. Science is used relatively ambiguously to either refer to the scientific method – which is a systematised method of learning – and scientific knowledge – which is the collection of knowledge generated by the scientific method.

How exactly the scientific method works shan't be of interest today. Rather I want to highlight, that it's a systematised method of learning. Thus, it's also only knowledge gathered by humans – yes, in a systematised way, but still decidedly imperfect. This also means, that it needs both curiosity and scepsis to progress in its march toward truth. It will never encompass all of truth, but our knowledge may get ever closer, bit by bit.

Since medicine is an application of science to the effort of treating human diseases, it also needs curiosity and scepsis to thrive. Someone, who tells not to ask questions or not to be sceptical, or most heretical of all, someone, who tells you to 'trust the science / medicine', simply doesn't understand the scientific method upon which medicine is (optimally) based.

This means, that you should ask questions, you should doubt, you should be sceptical. If someone tells you to do something, to take a drug, to start a treatment, to go into a surgery, doubt that recommendation, ask for their reasoning, get secondary opinions, etc.

In almost all domains of life, most of which require learning, eternal curiosity and scepsis will get you further faster than raw brain-computational prowess.

Don't just think. Think curious, sceptical, wonderous, weird thoughts, and for the love of all that is holy: doubt and you shall learn.

God bless,

Merlin L. Marquard