How? What? Why?

Set your curiosity free as Mike Rampton explains how asking questions changes the world.

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Magic words are generally only found in fairy tales, but the word "why" comes pretty close to being magical. It has changed the world countless times.

Every breakthrough and major achievement in human history has started with a question: a “Why?”, an “I wonder?”, a “What if?”, or “Shall we try?”. Every experiment and discovery starts with a question, sometimes as simple as “What is this?” or “What's over there?”

Often, the more you know about something, the more questions you have.

This might sound strange - surely if you know a lot you don't need to keep asking anything? However, asking questions is how everything important that humans ever learned happened. Starting off not knowing is pretty much the point.

Wonder mode: On

Curiosity is so important. It's how people get to know one another, figure things out and solve problems. Whether it's asking new friends about themselves, trying a new food or trying to tackle the biggest mysteries of existence, it all comes down to that same instinct of wanting to find out.

Two of the most important lifesaving developments came about from people thinking, "Hang on, what's going on here then?" In the late 18th century, the deadly disease smallpox killed huge numbers of people. A doctor named Edward Jenner heard a story that anyone who had caught a similar (but milder) illness called cowpox couldn't catch smallpox.

Intrigued by this, and curious about what was going on, he set about testing the idea. This led to the development of vaccines (medicines that train the body to fight disease using its own defences), which have saved millions of lives.