Veblen in Plain English: A Complete Introduction to Thorstein Veb ...

The third of the group-regarding instincts is what Veblen calls “idle curiosity.” Idle curiosity is the idea that people “want to know things, when graver interests do not engross their attention” [Ibid. 85]. People are instinctively curious about their world. The idea that people are innately curious did not originate with Veblen, and is in fact very old. Aristotle, for example, begins his Metaphysics with the sentence, “All men by nature desire to know” [1984, 1552]. To be human is to wonder, to want know. We are a curious species.

The immediate reason we want to know is simple curiosity, with no utilitarian motive. As economic historian Joel Mokyr notes, “useful knowledge, more often than not, emerges before people know what it will be used for” [2002, 294]. The inventor of the laser, for example, was teased by his colleagues that his invention had no use, and was “a solution looking for a problem” [The Economist, 2005a, 25]. It now has an astonishingly large number of applications ranging from weapons to medical devices. Veblen points out that idle curiosity is often viewed as “a genial infirmity of human nature” [1914, 85]. Some people seem to have more idle curiosity than others, and those with a lot of it are often considered dreamers or even a little unbalanced [Ibid. 87]. Investigating something for no particular reason may seem like wasted energy, but the cumulative effect of many people “just wanting to know” is profound. Mokyr writes that “a lot results from curiosity, an essential human trait without which no historical theory of useful knowledge makes sense” [2002, 16]. Over the long term it is one of the most important forces in civilization. The simple curiosity of the species led to what Veblen called “the most substantial achievement of the race” [Ibid. 87], namely the systematic advancement of knowledge. In other words, idle curiosity