This book examines intellectual curiosity as the driving force in scholarly endeavor on the
borderlands of geography history anthropology and other disciplines. The premise is that
curiosity is a salient trait of certain people past and present and that each field has its
exemplars in this regard. For Carl O. Sauer (1889-1975) America's leading geographer of the
twentieth century and his intellectual descendants the inquisitive spirit stood high on the
list of indispensable scholarly attributes. Their curiosity-driven studies converging space
time ecology and culture involved a fluid and unpredictable process of intellectual
discovery. This book combining the empirical with the philosophical and reflexive describes
how the power of intrinsic motivation and the thread of a romantic consciousness blend with the
joy of polymathic exploration.
