Curiosity

Galileo & his telescope

Anti-modern, fundamentalists beliefs continue to play an important role in many 21st-century religious communities, of all denominations. This essay by William Eamon, "The Disease Called Curiosity," traces such thinking back to the great Christian theologian, Saint Augustine:

Early modern curiosity was insatiable, never content with a single experience or object. Whereas Augustine linked curiosity to sensual lust and human depravity, Renaissance natural philosophers saw it as being driven by wonder and the engine of discovery.

STTA. What do you make of the connection Augustine makes between curiosity and sexual lust, a subject that the young Augustine, we know from his acclaimed autobiography, knew first-hand? It is almost as if curiosity is just a side-issue, and it is lust, or sexual desire more generally, that is the real demon of Augustine here, and maybe fundamentalists generally? What do you think?