curiosity

The night sky .

(Click to enlarge.)

Ole Wurm's Kunsthammer

Turns out that wedged into the list of motivations and drives for a human being's old brain survival mechanisms-

(sex, hunger, thirst..)

is Curiousity.

Just the sheer tug of wanting to know what's outside the cave entrance- what is that little shiny thing winking and blinking, what is that strangely shaped object, what is that insect?

Curiosity helps our little human race progress- but certainly at a cost.

The idea of a room, or a case, or a box or even an entire museum dedicated to storing, squirreling, and collecting oddities is very appealing to me.

They could be actual objects, or perhaps concepts or dreams or half finished thoughts?

If you each out side the cave, you could retrieve something incredibly vital.

Or you could get eaten.

That's pretty much the deal.

www.strangescience.net/biopics/oleworm.jpg

http://home.no.net/ekerilar/computus_runicus.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_curiosities

"In 1587 Gabriel Kaltemarckt advised Christian I of Saxony that three types of item were indispensable in forming a "Kunstkammer" or art collection: firstly sculptures and paintings; secondly "curious items from home or abroad"; and thirdly "antlers, horns, claws, feathers and other things belonging to strange and curious animals" "
(www. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunstkamera)

The problem is- we're severing any opportunities for our children to engage in curiousity.

Everything is named, packaged, pronounced.

Anything that isn't, is declared to be of no value.

There's an astrophysicist named Woody Sullivan, who declares we are sending up so much ambient light from our cities and airports and factories, that we can no longer see the stars our parents did.

Light pollution.

"Analogies of loss of wonder
The dismantling of Cabinets of Curiosities or their assimilation into curated museums was a result of the rise of scientific/logical thinking as the accepted way of describing the world. The sense of a loss of wonder as 'scientific' thinking became the dominant way of looking at the world is expressed in Keats' lines on Newton 'unweaving the rainbow'. This loss of wonder seems to be analogous with the sense of loss experienced by children as the use of rational thought and language displaces their intuitive relationship with the world, as in Wordsworth's child for whom 'there hath passed a glory away from the World'. "
(http://www.curiosity.org.uk/whatisa.htm)