Curiosity: The Doorway to Truth

Why did you play with the food and not eat it like I told you?

This is what my father asks my toddler, and the answer, if we think about it, is simple: curiosity.

Curiosity is so deeply embedded in us that we often overlook it. It’s why we reach out, touch, and explore. I touch things because they’re interesting. I engage with the world because I enjoy interacting with it.

This impulse to explore and interact is more quintessentially human than any scientific breakthrough, legal framework, or moral philosophy. Our own experiences—our own truths—are the foundation for higher-level reasoning and meaningful social coordination. We seek more of our truth, not less, and we trust our innate ability to interpret it to build our understanding of the world.

Yet, there’s a fine line between teaching conclusions and nurturing curiosity. When shared conclusions resonate with an individual’s intuitive truths, they strengthen the social fabric. But when conclusions are imposed as dogma—designed to shape intuition instead of emerging from it—they can distort the collective understanding of reality.

In asking that rhetorical question, my father reflects the Confucian tradition, which values ancestral order and societal harmony above all—even above reality itself. While this tradition has its merits, it also reminds me of a fundamental Enlightenment principle: truth rooted in reality is indispensable. This principle may be simple, even stereotypical, but it’s one I can’t imagine living without.