CAPITAL VIRTUE : CURIOSITY
“ALLEGORY OF THE UNDERWORLD : CHAOS OUT OF ORDER”
#Curiosity@FA
"I have no special talent, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
Curiosity is not one of the “formal” capital virtues, but I took the freedom to add it here. Curiosity can be defined as the desire to seek out new and unfamiliar experiences, and to explore and learn about the world.
Intelligence, on the other hand, can be defined as the ability to learn, reason, and problem-solve.
It is possible to argue that curiosity played a key role in the evolution of humans and their primate ancestors. Curiosity is a fundamental aspect of human psychology, and it has been suggested that it may have been a driving force in the development of our cognitive abilities and social structures.
Research has shown that individuals who score high on measures of curiosity also tend to score high on measures of intelligence, suggesting a positive correlation between the two.
Examples other than Einstein are Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Marie Curie and Ilya Prigogine. Prigogine was a Belgian physical chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977 for his work on non- equilibrium thermodynamics.
In "Order Out of Chaos," Prigogine emphasized the importance of openness to new ideas and the willingness to question established beliefs. He proved that order could originate spontaneously in the universe, at the cost of more disorder or chaos in another place.
Chaos and Order are like the "underworld" and the "upperworld" of science.
The concept of an underworld and an upperworld is a common theme in mythology and storytelling, and often represents the duality of life and death, light and darkness, and other opposing forces. All fallen angels end up in the underworld and may be transformed into other degraded versions of themselves.
The concept of the "Last Judgment" is a common theme in
the Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. In those, the "Last Judgement" is the ultimate act of separation between the underworld and the upperworld. It is when the "falling angels" either fall in the abyss of the "hell" of the underworld or get promoted and fly freely into the "heaven" of the upperworld.
The underworld is often inhabited by curious creatures, that would do well in a "curiosity cabinet" of the upperworld.
In the composition, one can see some of these wonderful and fearful creatures of the underworld. Floating around in the viscous ether of the underworld, the Maelstrom or vortex of chaos and destruction. But even in this chaos, as Prigogine predicted, the attentive viewer and curious mind may discover some order.
Don't we see there a kind of emoji ? A bit like the modern day Surprise emoji ?
But then the underworld version of it …
If a curious mind discovers something, surprise overtakes him in the "AHA-moment". Surprise is the fuel that keeps the curious mind going …
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." - Albert Einstein
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BZbodklWa7Q_k1cwv1Efjs9c-aRD_88r/view?usp=drive_link
