The need to learn and know, to explore and understand.

We need to know and therefor need to learn.

Our first need is to know. Without this need our ability to satisfy all our other needs would be impossible. This need to know necessitates we have some way to accumulate and analyze this knowledge. We are all born with the ability to do this. It is called the ability to learn. However, this site has placed the need to learn/know at the bottom and the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This is because this need does not follow the same rules as other needs. It is not even just one need. It is rather a number of interrelated yet separate needs. We even have two words in English that are quite different in meaning that both try to describe the need to learn or know. They are curiosity and interest.

 Curiosity and interest.  Curiosity and interest are the two words in English that we use to describe the need to learn or know. These words do not mean the same thing and even together do not fully enable us to cover all, or encompass fully, the need to learn and know.

Curiosity. Curiosity is about the new the novel and the previously unexperienced. It is about intrepidly venturing into the unknown.

Curiosity is about how creatures are drawn to novel situations and objects because they are strange and not previously experienced. Curiosity lures and drives us to explore and investigate the new and the novel enabling us to overcome our justifiable fear of the unknown. Curiosity involves risk taking.

Aversion. Aversion is often experienced as fear of the unknown. Even as we are driven to explore the weird and strange by curiosity we are also held back by our previous experiences with strange people, previously unexamined objects, previously unexplored places and of course unique or unfamiliar creative works. If our previous experience with any of these has proven painful we will automatically avoid them.

The more painful our previous experience with them has been the more vigorously we will avoid them. This aversion has to be overcome and it can be. It can be overcome by curiosity. It can be overcome by not adding painful associations while learning. It can be overcome by the thing becoming familiar as we learn about it.

Familiarity. With each successive exposure to a creative work, a person, an object or a place we slowly lose our fear of it. Of course if we experience displeasure in connection with familiarity we may build aversion with these things. However, normally displeasure does not happen and instead we begin to like it more and more as we fear it less and less. This is because exposure enables learning that reduces our fear. Also the more we are exposed to something the more we like it because, as we learn about any new thing we get pleasure from that learning, just as we do from learning anything. This is how interest is formed and it builds with every exposure to the item in question.

Interest. Interest, is about how creatures are drawn to situations and objects because they have experienced something like them before, a something which gave them pleasure to learn about.

They (each and every person's subconscious brain) make the reasonable assumption such similar experiences will likewise give them pleasure to learn about. If curiosity is a dangerous pleasurable lure then interest is a safe gradually building of desire.

Although scientists initially start by being curious they quickly develop associated pleasure with their subject matter and so become interested in their work. Scientists form conjectures, turn them into testable hypothesizes, then test the hypothesis in a study. If there is no unfortunate development, a variation of the study may then be run. Even though there is no positive outcome the scientists learns something that does not work and derives pleasure from that learning. If there is a positive outcome the scientist gets pleasure both from learning and the positive outcome.

All interest develops in this same way. We initially approach items, people, places or creative works with trepidation because we fear it and fascination because we are curious. 

But quickly we lose our fear of the strange as we are exposed successively to the work, person place or object. At the same time we build interest with each successive exposure as we make more and more pleasurable associations with the items in question.

Over familiarity. Beyond a certain point, with each successive exposure to a creative work, a person, an object or a place we may run out of things to learn. This being the case we stop being curious about it and we may begin to lose interest in it.

We become uninterested because beyond this point we are being exposed to the thing without an opportunity to learn. With each successive exposure we experience the displeasure of not being able to learn. With each exposure we thus become more and more bored until we begin to build aversion again. At his point we stop being interested and may build real aversion if forced to continue.

Interest grows. Interest if allowed to flourish initially starts to spread like an infection. Each time a pleasure association is formed it tends to be generalized to increasingly less similar elements within a domain of knowledge and eventually into other similar domains. Below is an idealized version of how interests might develop but interests develop in completely chaotic ways without any real logic.

   
Ideally the over exposure discussed above should never occur with interests that have become strongly embedded, as each personal field of interest should expand with each exposure to include more and more elements that are slightly less similar than preceding ones. Thus this ensures that there never is a situation where there is less to learn. In fact any field of interest should grow so there is ever more to learn not less.  

      Boredom. In the latter stages of over familiarity we have learned all there is to learn and further exposure makes our brain react by trying to shut down (sleep), create input to distract itself (waking dreams or hallucinations) or build actual aversion to the subject matter with each successive exposure.

Boredom tends appear in any place where human adults or children are forced to be exposed to objects, information or tasks after their willingness to learn about them (curiosity or interest) has evaporated.  

Schools, colleges and universities are perhaps the most likely places to find this overexposure to bits
of knowledge and the eventual boredom and aversion it generates. This is because schools are not organized in a way that encourages either curiosity or interest in the subjects they teach. They simply assume students should automatically be both curious and interested. 

The fear of curiosity in sayings and myths. Curiosity is in some ways the more important aspect of the desire to know for the very reason that societies have been so anxious about it. They have developed many myths and sayings specifying to warn of its dangers and to warn against indulging in it. "Curiosity killed the cat", "Pandora's box", "The apple of the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden" are all good examples of this fear and warning.

Pandora is told not to open the box but curiosity gets the better of her. She opens it and all the ills of the world are released.

Similarly Adam and Eve are told not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. But they are curious and are goaded to eat it by the snake. So they eat the fruit and are cast out of Eden.

        

Hubris. Of course some restraint is needed with curiosity to prevent the seeking of knowledge that would be dangerous to ourselves or others. Such seeking without regard for others is called hubris which can be very bad, but it is still not worth the cost of repressing curiosity itself.

Both curiosity and interest can be further divided, each into three different variants.

 1 Situational interest or novel curiosity. As explained above, interest, when it is not building on similar situations or objects to form an area of interest derives interest from a situation and is called situational interest. This is a very weak form of interest easily dismissed by unpleasant experience. 

This is type of interest is actually more correctly called curiosity, however, and it is in curiosity's strongest form. As explained above, this type of curiosity comes from an attraction to the unusual, the strange or the not previously experienced. Without this curiosity, interest would not be able to start. It could be said that this curiosity jump starts interest. So curiosity starts an interest and at this point it is fragile and will only develop into an area of individual interest, or an interest in a particular subject, if one experiences pleasure while learning about it. 

Curiosity will diminish or disappear if one has unpleasant experiences while learning. The more pleasurable experiences we have with exploring novel situations and objects the stronger this curiosity becomes. More importantly, the less unpleasant experiences we have while exploring novel situations and objects the stronger this curiosity becomes. Since any kind of learning, and especially the aha moments of understanding, are normally intrinsically pleasurable, so other pleasurable experience with learning are not necessary. The important thing is not to be put off by unpleasant experiences and to limit them as much as possible.

The role of chance in curiosity and situational interest. Because of the way interest works we tend to intentionally mostly expose ourselves to a limited range of of objects, places, and works of art that are similar to objects, places, and works of art we have previously experienced. Thus it is only chance that exposes us to situations, things and works that are truly diverse. Although curiosity moves us to explore the different the weird and the unknown we have to somehow be exposed to weird and unusual things, places etc. for curiosity to become active. Thus chance plays a large role in moving us to consume and explore disconnected, separated and diverging knowledge areas and domains. It is therefore essential for the diversity of each persons knowledge and keeps us from being caught in knowledge bubbles of our own creation. We should then be wary of tools like search engines that optimize our ability to exclude certain information types or even exclude such information from us without our desire for it to be excluded. They reduce the possibility of chance encounters with the unknown.

  2 Individual interest or subject/domain curiosity. As explained above, interests that build on the desire to learn about similar objects or similar situations, gradually form an area of interest or a subject matter to be interested in. This is by far the strongest form of interest. Here curiosity is least strong as it has little to do with novelty and is much more about attraction to objects and situations that are similar to ones previously experienced. Once an area of individual interest has fully formed it is very strong. Unpleasant experiences while learning will not cause one to be deterred in any way from such an interest and any slight pleasure experienced while learning about it magnifies its strength considerably. The more we know the more we want to know mostly because of this form of interest.

Divergence. However, curiosity is still very important here as it enables us to seek out and become interested in the most divergent parts of a field of study. In this way we can avoid being pulled into and confined in a bubble of knowledge that becomes more and more restricted. It enables us to expand our knowledge to ever wider reaches of a field of study rather than confining ourselves to an increasingly specific, specialized part of that subject field.   

3 General interest/curiosity. As explained elsewhere, interests overtime gradually coalesce by means of pleasurable experience into a general interest where learners become interested in everything. The pleasure learners obtain from learning about individual subjects is gradually generalized to everything. Curiosity that can be overpowered in individual interests comes back in general interest/curiosity as the attraction to the novel and unusual returns to continue to motivate us. Depending on whether one has pleasurable experiences with learning or unpleasant experiences one will have more or less general interest/curiosity. Again the more we know the more we want to know.

Two needs to know. The need to know then, is not a simple need. It is rather a mixture of entwined needs acting together. Not only that, but those needs serve to satisfy not one but two very different psychological requirements. This has lead this site to conclude that it may be necessary to consider the need to be, not one but two, two very different things. Let us propose then that there must be two needs to know:

1. A need for regularities in the environment (a deficiency need).
2. An aesthetic need to know for its own sake (a being need).

Both in both.  Clearly both the need for regularities and the need to know for its own sake must include elements of both curiosity and interest. We must be curious to seek out the regularities of the universe but we would never learn those regularities so well if we did not become interested in the minutiae and specificity of each regularity. On the other hand we would tend to stop learning for its own sake if we did not remain curious and interest is essential in exploring the similar and thus building large areas of interconnected knowledge. 

Intertwined. Though different and unique, these two needs to know are tightly bound together. (As one weakens through satisfaction, the other gains strength through satisfaction, so that at no time is there no strong need to know). Thus these needs to know cannot really be separated. In children the need to know is amassing regularities so that the universe will make sense. But adults need to know more. They need to keep learning for daily interaction even though their understanding of reality is usually quite solid. This continuous life long learning is made possible only through the pure love of knowing.

Placing this need at the bottom. This site has placed curiosity at the bottom of the hierarchy because it seems that no other needs can be satisfied if we do not first know how to satisfy them. Such learning cannot take place without curiosity motivating us. If others satisfy our needs for us, of course, we learn nothing. Sure others can provide for our needs but does that really satisfy those needs? This site holds that parents providing for their children's needs merely puts off the necessity of those needs being fully satisfied temporarily. Ultimately we all need to know how to satisfy those needs ourselves. Let us look at the words of Karl Popper.

Popper says:

"What became clear to me first, in connection with dogma formation, was that children - especially small children - urgently need discoverable regularities around them; there was an inborn need not only for food and for being loved but also for discoverable structural invariants of the environment ("things" are such discoverable invariants), for a settled routine, for settled expectations." "My main point was that the dogmatic way of thinking was due to an inborn need for regularities and to inborn mechanisms of discovery; mechanisms which make us search for regularities."

The need to know regularities in reality. A need for regularities in our personal realities would explain much of the early probings and frustrations of children. This need of children for regularities in the universe is obviously a deficiency need. Like all other deficiency needs it weakens as it gets satisfied regularly and as we gain confidence in our ability to satisfy it ourselves. 

Mapping reality. Children seek regularities and if they find them it leads them to anticipate that they will find others. If they are able to find these regularities regularly it gives them confidence both in the existence of regularities and in their own ability to find them. It is the child's confidence that all existence or reality is controlled by regularities and their confidence in their ability to satisfy their need for such regularities that enables children to construct an internal map of of that reality. This information model of patterns or constructs is a cognitive structure that enables the child to understand and navigate that reality. It is a map of reality based on those regularities. 

As each map of reality is formed the need to look for new regularities diminishes till it almost completely dissipates in early youth. Despite this, part of the need to know never weakens and appears in fact to grow stronger as it is satisfied. 

Placing this need at the top. This site has also placed the need to know at the top of the hierarchy because we must be able to, and do pursue knowledge for its own sake, unrelated to the satisfaction of deficiency needs. Even the least of us do this to some extent throughout their lives.

It may be that even as the need for universal regularities weakens a different need to know replaces it. This other need to know and explore is what we call the curiosity or interest for the love of it and for the of love of knowledge. It is the need to know when we are not deficient in knowledge and there is no apparent need for further regularities. Indeed knowledge gained by means of this kind of curiosity or interest may refute existing believed regularities, and indeed, that may be its main function.

The need to know for the shear love of knowledge. This curiosity for the love of knowledge or interest in knowledge for its own sake is always with us and unlike the need for regularities will become stronger as we grow. To some extent this curiosity/interest is motivating all living things from the moment of their birth and perhaps before. It is, however, impossible to divine which of these needs is motivating a creature when observing new born animals and seeing how they explore from the first moment. Still, curiosity/interest in later life is clearly not a deficiency need and does not follow the pattern of operation of deficiency needs. It is clearly a being need and follows the pattern of operation of being needs. It does not weaken as it is regularly satisfied, rather it grows stronger as it is satisfied.

Synergy. Both these needs to know are very important because before anything can be accomplished we must know how to accomplish it. It is only through these needs to know that all other needs are able to be satisfied. We can observe in animals and man in particular the performance of actions in order to satisfy  specific needs. We can also observe that they occasionally manage to satisfy more than one need. This is often achieved by accident. When this happens it may be said there is a synergy between the actions and the two needs. What satisfies one need also satisfies the other. A child may find regularities in the universe that help make him safe or he may inadvertently make himself safe by pursuing knowledge for its own sake. In both cases there is synergy between the need to learn and the need to be safe. It may be said then that these needs to know are a special case, where the satisfaction of any other need also satisfies this need to know.

Curiosity First In "Toward a Psychology of Being" Maslow makes a half-hearted attempt to make a case for showing that the safety need is stronger than curiosity and must therefore be lower in the hierarchy.

Maslow says:

"The young child in a strange environment will characteristically hang on to the mother and only then venture out little by little from her lap to probe into things, to explore and probe. If she disappears and he becomes frightened, the curiosity disappears until safety is restored. He explores only from a safe harbor."

It is the view of this site, that this tendency noticed by Maslow, far from showing the superior strength of the safety need, rather shows us how we use the need to learn/know (or explore) to help satisfy our safety need. The child wants to feel safe, and does feel safe near the mother, yet the child moves away from the mother. Why? To satisfy curiosity certainly, but this activity also helps to satisfy the need to feel safe. He/she wants to feel safe when he/she is away from the mother as well as when he/she is with her. As the child moves further and further from the mother and nothing bad happens the child begins to feel safe away from the mother. He/she actually feels safer than he/she did before. Before he/she only felt safe near the mother but now he/she begins to feel safe away from the mother as well as when he/she is close. The need to explore has actually helped in satisfying the need to feel safe. 

The unknown. This balance between the need to feel safe from the unknown and our curious need to explore the unknown continues to follow us all the days of our lives. It is best expressed in the words of one of the world's most curious people Leonardo da Vinci:

"I came to the entrance of a great cavern, in front of which I stood some time, astonished and unaware of such a thing. Bending my back into an arch I rested my left hand on my knee and held my right hand over my downcast and contracted eyebrows: often bending first one way and then the other, to see whether I could discover anything inside, and after having remained there for some time, two contrary emotions arose in me, fear and desire - fear of the threatening dark cavern, desire to see whether there were any marvelous thing within it." Leonardo da Vinci

    

"Don't be afraid to encounter risks. It is by taking chances that we learn how to be brave." Nancey V. Sims

Summary. Curiosity/interest or the need to know and explore is not one need but two. One need, the need for regularity acts on the child early in life and is instrumental in enabling the child to build an internal map of reality. This in turn enables the child to move to the next level in the hierarchy the physiological needs. As this happens interest becomes the more important driving force of the need to learn as curiosity is weakened. As the map of reality is built, the need for regularity dissipates. But even as this need to know is weakening another need to know (the need to learn for its own sake) is becoming stronger and taking its place. This new need to know gets stronger as it is satisfied. So the need to learn/know seems to be at first a deficiency need but as we grow it seems to become a being need. Also these two needs to know are made stronger by their synergy with other needs. They do not conflict with other needs instead they act in synergy with them, helping to satisfy them. Without interest and curiosity none of the other needs could or would be satisfied.

Climbing the Hierarchy. 

Maslow not only devised his hierarchy of needs but also devised a theory of how humans moved from one level of need to another. He was of the opinion that satisfaction of needs at one level caused these to become less dominant, so elevating the person to the next level. He also felt that if needs were satisfied on a regular basis, they would become weaker as higher needs became the priority. Now while this is generally accepted, it seems he has missed two important qualifications of how this works:

1 Mutual support. Firstly, he did not emphasize enough that needs often do not conflict and actually support one another.

2 Autonomy. Secondly, he seems to have missed, that there is an important intervening idea or condition for the weakening of a need. Here is the thing. Needs only weaken when the person or organism is confident in its ability to satisfy that need. Otherwise it would logically follow that every time a need returned, it would return at a strength equal to its previous appearance. This does not occur however. Maslow thought, that it weakened because it was being satisfied on a regular basis. Actually all needs weaken because the being involved is confident of his/her ability to satisfy that need him/herself.

Two types of confidence. The above is true, however, only for a very unique kind of confidence. Carol Dweck and her colleagues have pointed out that the confidence people have in their competence and especially their competence at learning is not sufficient in itself to enable success. This is because this kind of confidence can be an overconfidence that we need little effort and persistence to learn and become competent, with no basis in reality. It therefor does not enable true movement from one need level of the hierarchy to another. What is needed, is in fact, a more solid kind of confidence. What is needed, what is required, is a confidence that embraces effort, persistence and hard work as being the very activities through which competence can be increased, and through which all learning is made possible.

The first step in the hierarchy. When a child moves up the the hierarchy from the need to learn to the need to the need for physiological necessities such as food, water and shelter, the need to learn not only plays a most significant role in making this possible but also continues as steadily as before. Any problem solving needed in satisfying the needs for food, water etc. also requires continual learning how to do it. This first step in the hierarchy is different to all the others as with this one the need to learn does not diminish at all even as other needs become more important.

Parents and society.

The role of parents.  Parents, society, and the institutions of society all have a distinct and similar role to play in the satisfaction of people's needs. The role of a parent is to be a good parent and all that entails for the satisfaction of their children's needs. A good parent firstly satisfies directly the needs of those in their care while they are babies and unable to satisfy their own needs. But secondly and more importantly their role is to act as facilitators in enabling those in their care to learn the skills that are needed for children to satisfy their own needs. Not only that but a good parent is able to perceive when the child needs to try to do it by himself, when only advice is needed and when the child no longer needs any help at all. The good parent should want to satisfy his/her child's needs only when the child cannot satisfy his/her own needs him/herself. A good parent must know when to step aside for the child to learn how to satisfy his/her own needs. Also a good parent has to realize that his or her children intuit far better which internal needs need to be satisfied and when.

With regard to our needs to know it becomes clear in the early stages of life that the larger and more interesting the area the child has to explore, the greater the advantage the child will have. In olden times babies were wrapped in swaddling clothes and could hardly explore at all. These days we are more enlightened but still restrict our children's movements out of fear for their safety. Surely it is much healthier for the child if we lock dangerous things away or put them up high and then let the child explore as much as possible. In the facilitation of our needs to know, parents can help mostly by being there with answers and resources when the children are interested. But in order for children to feel they can learn by themselves, they need the opportunity to do so, and as much choice in what to do and how to do it as is possible without endangering them. 

The role of society. If this is true for the good parent, surely it should also be true for society and the institutions of society. Society and its institutions should supply our needs when we are helpless to supply them ourselves, but more importantly they should strive to enable us to learn the skills we need to satisfy our own needs. Also they should be aware that we always know best what needs are currently dominating our motivation and thus which ones need to be satisfied.

A similar function with regards to our need to know is required of society and especially the institution of education. Schools, parents, society by often forcing children to learn are disengaging children from their intrinsic motivation to learn. Without choice and the feeling of inner causality the desire to learn (either type of our needs to know) tend to weaken and fade. Society and schools are often stifling learning of the very skills that are needed by children to satisfy their own needs to know.

The need to learn and the possibility of life long learning.

We learn because we need to know, and life long learning happens because we experience this need to know strongly throughout our lives. How strongly we experience this need to know is a function of the likelihood of us becoming life long learners or not. 

We become life long learners both because of the amount of curiosity we retain as we move through life, and the extent to which we become interested in all things. Of course you do not have to become interested in everything to become a life long learner, but the more subjects you do become interested in, the greater the likelihood of you becoming a life long learner.