Lani Watson’s wonderful book is a study of the nature of questions: different types of questioning, where questions come from, and even how questioning might differ between species. The subject might seem dry and academic, but it’s immensely entertaining, and the author very compelling in the way she presents her argument.

The first chapter begins with an epigram of Rainer Maria Rilke’s, from Letters to a Young Poet. Rilke advises regarding apparently unanswerable questions as though they were beautifully bound books written in foreign languages that you can’t read. You hold them in your palm and run your hand over the pages, knowing there is something special within yet beyond your understanding.

Young children ask an average of 107 questions per hour in conversation with adults

No question marks are employed as punctuation throughout Watson’s book. All questions end with full stops. In a study dealing with the value of questions, it would seem obvious that the old adage ‘Stop looking for a simple answer and ask a better question’ would be neutralised by the fact that there are no questions per se, just polite imperatives. But later in the first chapter Watson asks us to consider questions hidden inside what appear to be ordinary statements, and imperatives hidden inside ordinary questions. For example, ‘Are you going to stop for that stop sign’ is not really a question.

To ask questions causes neurochemical responses in the brain that give us a small hit of dopamine: our brains reward us for asking. Many people I know are confused – and it’s reassuring to find that confusion has a pleasurable side.

Watson argues that we live in an ‘answer-oriented world’, one that values answers over questions. Noting that Google processes five trillion search requests annually, she quotes the ethologist Frans de Waal: ‘It is easy to drown in the information swamp.’

The now widespread tendency of ‘upspeak’ – turning the end of phrases up slightly so that even the simplest statement sounds like a question – originated in Australia and is part of the way Australians talk. Watson refers to it as ‘rising intonation’. I think the habit evolved from the desire not to appear confrontational, because there is another adage that runs: ‘He who asks the questions controls the conversation.’

Watson is an honorary fellow at the University of Edinburgh and was formerly a research fellow at the University of Oxford. As an academic, she has observed that the ‘answering mindset’ of the educational system ‘orients us to focus on answers without always stopping to consider the value or purpose of the questions’.

One study has revealed that young children ask an average of 107 questions per hour in conversation with adults, and, Watson writes, ‘asking questions is a central part of what it means to be a child’. Just as peer pressure in middle school constricts our childhood artistic abilities (Picasso once said ‘It took me four years to paint like Raphael but a lifetime to paint like a child’), so does the same peer pressure discourage us from the private questioning that we relied on in childhood in order to learn. In other words, better to be silent than look stupid.

Watson gives examples of the ‘lop-sided question-answer dynamics’ that exist in courtrooms. Lawyers ask questions, whereas witnesses are limited to giving answers. She traces the origins of courtroom advocacy back to ancient Greece and Aristotle, and the use of questions to destroy an opponent’s argument. As Aristotle put it: ‘Land him in absurdity.’

Watson is a scholar, philosopher and public speaker, and also known as ‘the Questions Doctor’ on social media. The first thing you notice about her on a podium is her bright blue hair. The thing you finally come away with is the depth of her intellect and charm. This book is a journey through her years of research and enquiry, including a section at the end which she calls the ‘empty appendix’: blank pages to write down any queries you may have while you’re reading.

Just don’t use any question marks.