"A wonderful little story about five-year-old Albert Einstein, who was very slow to speak and whose parents feared he was none too bright, shows us how neophilia works and what it’s for. One day, when he was sick in bed, the boy was given the compass to fiddle with to keep him occupied. The new plaything made him wonder about magnetic fields, which got him interested in physics, and, well, you know the rest. Few of us are Einsteins, but all of us have the same capacity to be curious about something new that sparks the learning and sustained interest that lead to achievements great and small."

- New – a cultural history and future of neophilia, our compulsive need for novelty and change. (via curiositycounts)

(via curiositycounts)