I dug things up. I was curious. I liked to draw what I found.
Interpretation
Curiosity drives discovery and creativity.
Mary Leakey's quote reflects her passion for exploration and the importance of curiosity in the pursuit of knowledge. It emphasizes how digging into the unknown and being inquisitive can lead to significant discoveries and creative expressions, showcasing both her archaeological work and her artistic inclination to depict her findings.
In practice
In a lecture on the importance of curiosity in scientific research.
There were details like clothing, hair styles and the fragile objects that hardly ever survive for the archaeologist-musical instruments, bows and arrows, and body ornaments depicted as they were worn... No amounts of stone and bone could yield the kinds of information that the paintings gave so freely
She stops, pauses, turns to the left to glance at some possible threat or irregularity, and then continues to the north. This motion, so intensely human, transcends time.
Basically, I have been compelled by curiosity.
No amounts of stone and bone could yield the kinds of information that the paintings gave so freely.
The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.
Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of even Newton or Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law. It is not just a wonderful idea. It is a dangerous idea.
When asked about which scientist he'd like to meet, Neil deGrasse Tyson said, "Isaac Newton. No question about it. The smartest person ever to walk the face of this earth. The man was connected to the universe in spooky ways. He discovered the laws of motion, the laws of gravity, the laws of optics. Then he turned 26.
We're always, by the way, in fundamental physics, always trying to investigate those things in which we don't understand the conclusions. After we've checked them enough, we're okay.
Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.
If you don't get a good night's sleep, the events of the day are not properly encoded in memory.
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