Childlike Curiosity is a Virtue

As a species, humans manifest a quality called neoteny, the retention of juvenile characteristics into adulthood. Neoteny has physical ramifications—scarce body hair and a flat face are two examples—but it also has neurological ones. Namely, we have an extraordinary capacity to continue learning throughout life. If neoteny helps to explain our ability to learn, researchers are now figuring out what drives us to take advantage of it. In 2008, a group of scientists set up a novel fMRI stu...

 Lifelong Learning

Seneca, the Latin philosopher, wrote, “As long as you live, keep learning how to live.” Centuries later Andre Gide, the French critic and novelist said, “The wise man is he who constantly wonders afresh.” The scientific and technological explosion in this century has caused us all to recognize that learning is a continuous, permanent, lifelong pursuit. It is a process which commences with birth and only terminates at death and is then carried on by others in a never-ending cont...