Though it certainly didn’t end well for the cat – at least as the old saying goes – curiosity usually bodes much more positively for people. As TEG Group Editor Chad Merchant has come to realise, few things advance our development as much as those who heed the call of an inquisitive mind.

As far as human beings go, you could probably come up with two dozen attributes generally considered positive without even trying very hard, and that’s without even getting into the physical side of things. Think about it – what are some personal characteristics you’d consider as good? Friendliness. Compassion. Honesty. Intelligence. Loyalty. Diligence.Generosity. Dependability.

The list goes on and on. One of the most underrated attributes, however, is one of the most important: curiosity. Friendly people are great, but I think people who are curious are the ones who really drive the human race.

Consider: What if everyone who looked up at the stars just shrugged off what they saw? What if they noticed the stars were in a certain spatial arrangement, but never cared or wondered why? Long ago, some people who observed the night sky weren’t just filled with awe, they were curious about what they saw. What are those points of light? Where are they? Why do some seem to flicker and others don’t?

Why are they predictably in a given place each night? So they observed, they recorded, they collaborated with other curious people, and these observations, coupled with the advent of the scientific method, gave us the field of astronomy. Now we understand stars, constellations, planets, and more.

Today, astronomers are still just as curious, and are learning more every day about black holes, dark matter, extrasolar planets… knowledge that will one day enable our species to travel to and live on other worlds, knowledge that will likely one day definitively answer the question, “Are we alone in the universe?”

In pondering this, I realised that virtually every meaningful advance in society came to be largely because someone was curious. They wanted to know how something worked, they wondered if something could be made better, they wanted to more fully understand the world around them.

They didn’t just accept the status quo. They pushed to find answers to questions, and more often than not, we all benefit from this. According to one published and peer-reviewed study on the topic, “Curiosity as a behaviour and emotion is the driving force behind not only human development, but developments in science, language, and industry.”

Oddly enough, all of this kind of came to me because of the return of the 17-year cicadas in North America, which should be well underway by the time this is published. Cicadas are a locust-like insect with a fascinating life cycle, spending nearly all of it burrowed underground as nymphs, then emerging briefly to mate, reproduce, and die. Not all cicadas are considered periodic, and of those that are, the cycles vary: some are annual, some are on a longer cycle.

One brood is on an astounding 17-year cycle, meaning their emergence this year will be the species’ first appearance since 1999. The emergence of these periodic cicadas is often overwhelming, with millions and millions of the insects making a synchronized appearance in a given area, truly one of nature’s most impressive (and loudest) spectacles, not to mention a phenomenon that is truly special in its relative rarity.

With this species having such a long life cycle, though, it must have taken extraordinary discipline and patience for human observers to learn so much about the insects and their periodic appearances, and longer still to evaluate and confirm the 17-year cycle. But learn they did. Curiosity drove them, observations were made, hypotheses were tested over a period of decades, and as a result, we now know pretty much everything there is to know about these animals.

I read an article in the news about the cicadas and then went over to Wikipedia to learn a bit more, and was amazed at the sheer depth of information on this one specific species of insect – one among nearly a million identified insect species! And all that information – that vast body of knowledge – exists simply because people were curious.

And that’s just one example of thousands, perhaps millions. Though much remains to be discovered, as a species we have learned so much, we have amassed so much collective knowledge.

In the fields of botany, chemistry, biology, engineering, medicine, psychology, geology, construction, physics, mathematics, and a thousand other unique disciplines, the sum of human knowledge is truly staggering, the amalgam of the effort of countless individuals over scores of centuries. And driving it all are the curious among us.

So to those who observe, to those who wonder, to those who are keen of mind and inquisitive of spirit, and to those who not only ask why, but seek to find the answer, I salute you. The human race is made better because of people like you… and it’s a far better end to curiosity than ever befell that poor, hapless cat!