Cultural geography and the inner dimensions of the quest for knowledge

In North American cultural geography, intellectual curiosity has motivated most scholarship directed to learning about the world. Two aspects of that curiosity, epistemic inquisitiveness and wonder, work together to drive the pursuit of knowledge that has the potential to reach an ecstatic consciousness. A great exemplar of intellectual curiosity as a powerful motivational force was Carl O. Sauer (1889–1975), who considered pure inquiry based on intrinsic interest as the foundation of geographical scholarship. That research can also have a euphoric dimension is described in three vignettes of past projects in Highland Peru, the Mascarene Archipelago, and equatorial Brazil, which make explicit how wanting to know and wondering about what might be known prompt ideas and drive them forward. With introspection, cultural geographers are in a position to inform the discipline about how scholarship that conjoins thought and feeling can lead to an understanding of motivation and an appreciation of the intellectual virtues and peak experiences that accrue from scholarly endeavor. To do that requires a willingness to get beyond the reticence that has kept the affective dimension out of research reports.