In the dim glow of candlelight, centuries before the flicker of fluorescent labs and the hum of academic bureaucracies, scholars across continents immersed themselves in questions about the stars, the soul, and the structure of the world. Whether copying texts in a Cairo library, sketching stars in a Chinese observatory, or translating ancient manuscripts in a European monastery, they followed the thread of something ancient and deeply human: curiosity.
Now, in a new study published in Scientometrics, scientists have uncovered a startling and profound truth: the way humans explore knowledge may be fundamentally consistent across cultures, continents, and centuries. Even before the rise of modern science, scholarly interests across the globe—whether rooted in philosophy, botany, or astronomy—followed strikingly similar patterns.
“We were interested in the historical development of science,” said Hugo Mercier, research director at the Institut Jean Nicod and lead author of the study. “But what surprised us was how little that development varied across time and space.”
By analyzing the documented pursuits of over 13,000 scholars born before 1700, Mercier and his colleagues discovered something extraordinary: human intellectual curiosity clusters reliably into three broad domains—the human, the natural, and the abstract—and this tripartite structure appears again and again across different civilizations and historical eras.
Turning to the Past to Understand Curiosity
Modern science is shaped by institutions, funding constraints, and career incentives. But centuries ago, before universities standardized departments and governments funded labs, inquiry was a more personal endeavor. To glimpse this purer form of curiosity—less shaped by bureaucracy and more by individual drive—the research team focused on scholars born before the 18th century.
They pulled data from the Cultura 1.0 database, a compilation of historical biographical information sourced from online catalogs and Wikidata. Their analysis included over 13,500 scholars, of whom 2,317 were deemed “polymaths”—individuals whose recorded expertise spanned at least two distinct domains. These polymaths, from across Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, and beyond, became the focal point of an ambitious effort to map the architecture of intellectual curiosity.
Each scholarly interest—be it philosopher, geographer, or zoologist—was treated as a “node” in a sprawling network. Connections between nodes were based on how often these interests co-occurred in the same individual, revealing which combinations occurred more often than chance would suggest.
One World, Three Domains
What emerged from this massive dataset was a map not of historical trivia, but of intellectual universals. Across civilizations, three major clusters of inquiry consistently appeared.
The Human Domain grouped interests such as theology, philosophy, and history—fields centered on moral reasoning, social order, and human narratives. The Natural Domain included zoology, botany, and geography—disciplines grounded in observing and categorizing the physical world. And the Abstract Domain was home to mathematics, astronomy, and musicology—fields built on symbolic reasoning, patterns, and logic.
Even more striking, the proportion of scholars in each domain stayed remarkably consistent. Whether in the Islamic Golden Age or Renaissance Europe, about one-third of scholars focused on each of the three domains. The patterns of co-occurrence were just as stable. Philosophy and mathematics often traveled together, whether in the work of Persian polymath Al-Khwarizmi, French thinker Blaise Pascal, or Chinese mathematician Xu Yue. Similarly, geography often appeared alongside botany and zoology—an echo of early naturalists cataloging the world during voyages of discovery.
The Science of Universal Curiosity
To ensure the analysis wasn’t skewed by the overrepresentation of European scholars, the team constructed a “Global Network” by balancing the sample—pairing all known non-European polymaths with a randomized subset of Europeans. They also compared networks built from different regions using a statistical metric called the Weighted Jaccard similarity, which measures overlap in the structure of linked interests.
The result? Astonishingly high similarity across all networks.
“There appears to be universal patterns in the kind of things that people find interesting,” said Mercier. “Everywhere, someone interested in mathematics is more likely to also be interested in astronomy than in history, for instance.”
Even regional differences—like a stronger tilt toward natural sciences in 17th-century Europe—were modest. In every region and century examined, the three domains appeared again and again, with subtle shifts but no radical departures.
These findings point to something deeper than cultural convention. The structure of human curiosity, the study suggests, may be embedded in how our minds work—tied to fundamental cognitive preferences that transcend borders and ages.
Born to Wonder: Curiosity and Cognition
Why do these patterns recur so consistently? The researchers propose a compelling hypothesis: the three domains of human curiosity reflect distinct cognitive styles.
Those drawn to the abstract may have a natural talent for symbolic thought, pattern recognition, and logical reasoning—making mathematics and astronomy particularly appealing. The natural domain may attract those with a keen eye for categorization and observation, the kind of mind that notices the subtle distinctions between species or the layout of landscapes. Meanwhile, the human domain speaks to those compelled by moral complexity, cultural meaning, and the philosophical questions that shape civilizations.
Of course, context matters. In 17th-century Netherlands, for instance, the age of exploration and maritime trade made natural inquiry especially feasible. Botanists sailed with merchants, geographers followed trade routes, and curiosity bloomed in tide pools and spice markets. Yet even then, the appeal of abstract and human knowledge didn’t fade—it simply adapted.
The consistency across time and geography suggests that while opportunity may shape what people study, it doesn’t necessarily change why they study. That drive appears to be surprisingly constant.
Limitations and the Path Forward
No study of history escapes its blind spots. The researchers acknowledge their dataset is incomplete and likely biased. Most of the documented scholars were male and European, largely due to historical record-keeping practices. Of the 13,556 individuals analyzed, only 144 were women—a stark reminder of how much intellectual history remains untold.
The categories of scholarly interests themselves—such as “astronomer” or “theologian”—can be fuzzy, shifting across cultures and centuries. A philosopher in ancient China may have pursued questions that a European historian would classify differently. These inconsistencies could blur the analysis.
But despite these challenges, the core finding—that curiosity follows a stable and structured form—holds strong across the data.
“This kind of consistency would be unlikely to emerge by chance,” Mercier emphasized.
Future work could expand the dataset with digitized manuscripts and texts, offering a richer picture of what early scholars actually wrote, thought, and debated. Scholars also hope to uncover the hidden intellectual lives of women and marginalized groups, long left out of mainstream historical narratives.
Why This Matters Now
In an era where information is abundant but attention is scarce, this study offers a quiet revelation: the pursuit of knowledge has always followed familiar paths.
Today’s scientists, philosophers, and historians are still grappling with questions rooted in human nature, the physical world, and abstract principles. Whether peering through a telescope, sequencing DNA, or analyzing ancient texts, they walk trails carved centuries ago.
The findings offer a hopeful reminder that the thirst for understanding is one of humanity’s most enduring qualities. Despite war, empire, revolution, and digital disruption, we remain creatures who wonder.
And perhaps, in a world growing more divided and fast-paced, recognizing the shared architecture of our curiosity can help us rediscover something unifying—that to be human is to seek, to ask, and to find joy in not knowing, yet needing to understand.
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