I = O to P * C
 
Degree of Intelligence equals the Power of Observation coupled with Curiosity.
 
Observation is the activity of receiving knowledge of the outside world through the senses.
 
Last evening on the forth floor roof deck of our castle, I observed a spider's web backlit in warm orange light. The sun had just plopped past the distant tree-over-water line, sunset cast. The spider was about the size of a quarter, too large it seemed, to be floating between the two curving corners of iron balustrade. Eight legs and two white spinnerets wiggled and ejected, grabbed, stretched, set, wiggled, ejected, grabbed and stretched, in perfect repetition, counter-clockwise, ever-decreasing concentric, almost perfect, circular polygons. Only three thirty-seconds of an inch separated each orbit. It seemed the spider was trying to finish her work before the light totally faded. Her mate, skinny and used up, hung to the outside edge, content to watch her do all the work. 
 
I commented, "She wants to finish but won't change her rhythm. She seems in a hurry but never hurries." 
 
"Nope", Lynn observed. I wonder at the irony in the space between her "no" and the "pope", not wanting to be the other spider.
 
I = O to P * C.
 
The spider is spinning her web in time to the tick of millions of years of encoded habit. Instinct is her clock and her motor and her reason for being. She will feel the strike of the fly and then the wiggle and the panic and she will quickly move to its direction, touching only the radial, non-sticky webs. She will know where the fly dies based on the tensile strength of the struggling vibrations. She will eventually see its movements, even in the dark. She might even smell the fly's fear as she approaches. She is hungry but feels no hunger. She possesses incredible senses and her Observations are multiplied by her genetic heritage to great Powers. But she has zero Curiosity. She is therefore not very Intelligent. O to high P * zero, is still zero.
 
Yesterday afternoon, I explored an abandoned monument to the business of cutting up mountains.
 
Three hundred thousand square feet of metal skinned building bones, dusty beam cranes and twenty, twelve foot tall screw-jacks, mummies to the long dead screams of diamond bladed saws against red granite, silent. Above the gutted quarry, a sliver of mountain meat pushed up against a glass and granite paneled building, a modern architectural tribute to the long gone profit of six acres of men and machine, an abandoned temple.
 
Two other kids, one a city mayor of incredible intelligence and vision and one, soon to be congressman, explored the soaring empty spaces with me and all of a sudden, somebody screams, "Snake!" The senses correctly and instantly added up to the instinct of a scream. Muscles pumped into one big unconscious jump back. 
 
Almost at once, Curiosity over-rode instinct. There, on the second floor, in and out of the metal studs of the balcony overlooking the three storied glass vault, weaved an eighteen inch, orthogonally tattooed baby Bull Snake, perfect black-boxed pattern, perpendicular to the body. I reached down and picked it up. Curiosity identified the snake as harmless. The snake was just looking for field mice and then, of course, we see mouse droppings everywhere. Everything real snaps into focus and Intelligence makes sense of the senses.
 
Now here's where I'm going with this story of snakes and spiders and little kids, exploring:
 
WITHOUT CURIOSITY, regardless of the POWER OF OBSERVATION, ITELLIGENCE IS NAUGHT.
 
And I think Curiosity contributes to even more than Intelligence. It is the Window to Wisdom.
 
For this kid, Curiosity is the Engine of Youth. When I see giant broken granite slabs and misshapen monoliths strewn about a hundred unexplored acres, broken rock stacked high around deep caverns filled with motionless water, reflections of trees and flowers growing out of haphazard crevices, shadows cast by discarded, non-profitable, residue, I see tables for twelve. I see Stone Henge columns and beams. I see sentinels, stalwart, guarding entries. I see picnic tables and benches and children laughing, climbing, finding, exploring. I see parks. I see sculpture gardens. I see art. I see, what once was wasted, is wasted not and I have to touch the chiseled stone.
 
A Window to Wisdom.
 
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity."