Staying Curious

So we were out bowling last night (the Cool Table crowd) and at some point in time inertia came up.

I don't know why. I wasn't paying a lot of attention at that point.

The bottom line was that we didn't know what the equation for inertia was -- but we wanted to know. I realized that there was an untapped resource bowling on the next lane down: I had said hi earlier to a friend of mine from church who happens to be a (civil) engineer. We posed the question to him, and when he didn't know the equation, he asked the guys he was bowling with (more coworkers) -- and when they didn't know, they pulled up the Internet on someone's phone and tried to figure it out.

I've seen this particular phenomenon more than once: random group curiosity. It almost always starts the same way ... Someone's mind wanders and he finds himself wondering about the marvels of the universe. From this comes a question -- a definition, an equation, a news story, whatever. But when he can't remember it, he has to ask the other engineers around him. Whether or not they were curious before, now that question is nagging at them all. And it quickly becomes a quest for an answer.

It probably wouldn't be nearly as amusing if it wasn't for the fact that the subject matter is almost always nerdy. It doesn’t seem to matter what discipline to which each individual engineer subscribes him(her)self -- it just happens. It doesn't usually matter how old the engineers involved are (although the longer someone's been an engineer, the more likely it is there will be an answer early) or where everyone works or where they went to school -- the curiosity is there, the fascination with the way things around them work.

For a profession known for being dry and at times incredibly arrogant, this curiosity is refreshing. And something of a relief -- after all, if we couldn't stay curious, there wouldn't be much hope for future civilization. Uninterested engineers don't help advance life -- and if we don't do it, well, there aren't a lot of people who are in the running to pick up the slack.

That's our purpose in this world, right? It's dry at times, mind-numbing at others -- but if we can keep that curiosity, it can change the way the world works.