… A LOVE OF MYSTERY IS WOVEN INTO OUR BIOLOGY, AND EDGAR ALLAN POE WAS THE FIRST TO FIND THE FORMULA FOR A VERY SPECIFIC DOPAMINE HIT. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This mental software has been around for millions and millions of years. The human brain, however, found a way to put this old code to new use. The crucial turn is the ability to find pleasure not just in calories and sex, but in ideas and narratives. It doesn’t matter if it’s a newspaper story about an inexplicable disappearance or an Edgar Allan Poe whodunit: these works still excite the dopaminergic system, which is why we pay attention even when they contain no primal rewards. As the anthropologist Clifford Geertz famously observed, “Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.”
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