Hello, my name is Father Gregory Pine and I'm a Dominican friar of the

province of St Joseph. I teach at the Dominican House of Studies and I work for the

domestic Institute and this is Pines with the Coynes. In this episode I'd like to

talk about curiosity. Specifically is

curiosity a good thing or is it a bad thing? Because yeah you got people out

there saying all kinds of things about it. So some largely positive. On the one hand we have Eleanor Roosevelt saying I

think at a child's birth if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful

gift that gift should be curiosity. Or you've got Albert Einstein saying,

the important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for

existing. Whereas you've got largely negative things to say by others in the tradition, like

Thomas Hobbs saying curiosity is the lust of the mind and all people in all times and

places saying that curiosity killed the cat. So we know the cat

killing is no bueno and we have to account for the fact that some people are

saying positive things and some people are saying negative things. So there's

confusion on the issue. So what exactly is curiosity and where does it fit in our human life and how does it contribute to our human flourishing?

Let's take a look.

Okay, so I think that we can start with what most people mean by curiosity and work our

way towards what some people mean by curiosity. And along the way identify those various strengths and weaknesses

which we as human beings are subject to yes so as to chart a course towards

further perfection.

Okay, so I think that when most people say curiosity, what they mean is a kind of

intellectual openness and intellectual

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