How many people are curious? The founder of the Discoverychannel once told me that this is about half the population. Because everyone is born curious, we lose half of it somewhere. How do we ensure that people stay away from the off button?
Someone whose switch was on for a lifetime is Mrs. Suus Versteeg. We met through the wonderful series of portraits of centenarians in de Volkskrant recorded by Marjon Bolwijn. Mrs Versteeg – Aunt Suze for intimates – was born in 1923 and already knew as a girl in primary school that she wanted to study mathematics. She could solve complicated puzzles and sums effortlessly. Unfortunately, the war forced her to discontinue her university studies. But the fascination with numbers and figures remained.
In the newspaper she proudly showed off her collection of handmade Platonic polyhedra – five regular mathematical figures that have fascinated humanity for many millennia and can even be found in Babylonian clay tablets.
In the interview she mentioned that she had seen a photo of me with my own painted polyhedra and so our correspondence began. Her letters were full of insights, questions and moments of wonder. All things she had “thought and thought about”. Did the fact that there are only five symmetric polyhedra have anything to do with our decimal system or the fact that we have ten fingers? Besides, how would we think about numbers if we were jacks-of-all-trades? Or plants? She ended a long exposé on geometric figures with the beautiful line: “Hey, I’m glad I lost this and you’re glad this endless sentence is over!” She concluded with “greetings from my five polyhedra to yours.”
The mathematical legacy
These two collections of polyhedra are now together on my desk. I can call myself the proud guardian of Mrs. Versteeg’s mathematical legacy. Because our contact took a different turn this year. Her health was failing and she was looking for a good home for her geometric “tinkering.” A few months later I was saddened to hear that she had chosen her end point.
I will always remember our last telephone conversation. It was a long exchange about the math. We quickly agreed that the dodecahedron was both our favorite. After all, how amazing that you can glue twelve pentagons together into a perfectly symmetrical football. Did she know that this polyhedron was also Plato’s favorite? He thought that everything superlunar was made of this fifth element (the ether or quintessence). What about polyhedra in other dimensions? I could tell her that much more is possible in four dimensions than in three. That you can even make one four-dimensional football from 120 dodecahedrons. Just before the end of her life, Suus Versteeg was as curious as that girl in primary school.
Curiosity is defined as the ability to recognize and explore new, uncertain and complex events. Much research shows that this gift typically diminishes with age. Curiosity does not evaporate, but is increasingly dented in the many collisions with reality. The pressure of education, work and social processes causes us to rely more and more on what we already know and turn away from the unknown. Children ask fewer questions in the classroom than at the kitchen table. No one wants to look like a fool at work by asking a ‘stupid question’. The desire for efficiency rewards the well-known path instead of the winding path.
Critical thinking protects against fake news and manipulation
Over the years, we get the feeling that we know it all. Curiosity is exchanged for ‘simple common sense’, which everyone thinks they have just enough of. The desire to discover is not a mental muscle that is weakened by biological processes, but a talent that we consider less and less important. As someone once remarked, when I told them that I spent so much time looking up things on the Internet: “Is there so much you don’t know?”
The decline in curiosity later in life is often attributed to a shortened future perspective. Why worry about the unknown when you have little time left to explore it? Here Mrs. Versteeg teaches us an important lesson. Curiosity is the intrinsic pleasure of asking questions. Not because it leads to useful or important answers, but out of pure amazement about the world and the richness of the unknown. It is a deeply human trait that can last a lifetime. In fact, staying curious is an excellent way to grow old healthily. It shows its value especially at a later age. Curiosity teaches you how to deal with uncertainty and change. Interest in others helps you make new connections.
But there is an even more fundamental reason why curiosity is indispensable. Critical thinking is essential for a well-functioning society and protects against fake news and manipulation. The curious question authority, seek sources of knowledge, and tolerate the uncomfortable truth that many questions do not have simple answers. In a democracy this is not a luxury, but a dire necessity.
At the end of our conversation, Mrs. Versteeg asked if I knew that she would no longer be there in a week. Yes, I knew that and I fully respected that. Her last words?
“See you somewhere in the umpteenth dimension.”
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