School is starting, and we need to keep students from curiosity. Curiosity? It sounds bad to modern ears, but ancient and medieval thinkers considered it a vice—a dangerous intellectual habit. You can hear that judgment in the old saying, “Curiosity killed the cat.” You can also see it in horror movies where people decide they must investigate the sounds coming from upstairs—even though they know of a rampaging murderer in the area! Yet apart from those examples, we usually treat curiosity as simply good.
What do we mean by “curiosity” as good and healthy? What did those older thinkers mean by it as bad and dangerous morally and spiritually?
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