I don't know, I think it was fairly thorough -- at least, for a quick read on somebody's webpage.
Regarding Leonardo as a tinkerer, based on his description of Mozart's works, I'm pretty sure that this guy would find da Vinci to be creative.
As for the rest -- I was excited when he mentioned cost versus benefit for curiosity, and disappointed that he didn't spend more time on it.
Curiosity is dangerous. I've been lucky to have survived several different bouts of raging curiosity; as a species, curiosity about things like nuclear reactions has brought with it the risk of self-annihilation. Space exploration has claimed a number of lives, as has more conventional exploration throughout history.
If you're one of the people that likes to equate everything that modern humans do to some evolutionary development, then I think it would be easy to show an evolutionary disadvantage for very curious creatures. The most curious have pretty good odds of disappearing and never coming back, or getting themselves otherwise killed or removed from the gene pool.
What would be left is the childlike curiosity that he was talking about -- curiosity sufficient for exploring the immediate environment, figuring out what's good to eat and what isn't, what's dangerous and what isn't, and once the environment becomes "safe", you stop exploring.
I have one quibble though: I don't think that this solves the case of anti-intellectualism in the sense that most people would think of the term, which is a hostile response to intellectualism. What he described was more of an apathy towards rigorous curiosity; when I think of anti-intellectualism, I think back to high school.
My guess is hostility towards intellectualism is just a way for some people to level the social playing field against other people. Just as intellectuals who are not well-suited to sports will sniff down their noses at the very idea of chasing some stupid ball around a field, so do the greater majority of people sniff down their noses at the very idea of exercising your brain if you don't have to.
Regarding Leonardo as a tinkerer, based on his description of Mozart's works, I'm pretty sure that this guy would find da Vinci to be creative.
As for the rest -- I was excited when he mentioned cost versus benefit for curiosity, and disappointed that he didn't spend more time on it.
Curiosity is dangerous. I've been lucky to have survived several different bouts of raging curiosity; as a species, curiosity about things like nuclear reactions has brought with it the risk of self-annihilation. Space exploration has claimed a number of lives, as has more conventional exploration throughout history.
If you're one of the people that likes to equate everything that modern humans do to some evolutionary development, then I think it would be easy to show an evolutionary disadvantage for very curious creatures. The most curious have pretty good odds of disappearing and never coming back, or getting themselves otherwise killed or removed from the gene pool.
What would be left is the childlike curiosity that he was talking about -- curiosity sufficient for exploring the immediate environment, figuring out what's good to eat and what isn't, what's dangerous and what isn't, and once the environment becomes "safe", you stop exploring.
I have one quibble though: I don't think that this solves the case of anti-intellectualism in the sense that most people would think of the term, which is a hostile response to intellectualism. What he described was more of an apathy towards rigorous curiosity; when I think of anti-intellectualism, I think back to high school.
My guess is hostility towards intellectualism is just a way for some people to level the social playing field against other people. Just as intellectuals who are not well-suited to sports will sniff down their noses at the very idea of chasing some stupid ball around a field, so do the greater majority of people sniff down their noses at the very idea of exercising your brain if you don't have to.