Questions and Inquiry

I think that almost all questions do lead to inquiry, because simply just asking a question with the intent of learning something new is an example of inquiry. Inquiry is the desire to gain knowledge or information, and most questions do exactly that. Just asking someone a simple yes or no question, no matter how simple will in some way lead to the person gaining more knowledge than they had before. An example in which inquiry is closed down is in the instance of sarcasm, because the person's answer is of little or no concern to the person asking the question. The fact of them answering or ignoring the question really doesn't matter.

Now, obviously some questions lead to more inquiry than others. For example, Bryson's question as to where random components of his house originated from in the "Introduction" of At Home lead to more inquiry than say the question "How do birds fly?" would. Sometimes the simplest or weirdest questions, like "Why do forks have four tines and not three or five? (At Home 5)" bring out the best examples of inquiry. The less straight-forward answers that come out of a question, the more inquiry the question leads to. If one question leads into other questions, more inquiry will come about. In Bryson's "Introduction" his questions about the churchyard/gravestones lead to questions about archaeological finds, and so on, leading to more and more inquiry.

Basically, if a question can be answered on the spot, or with a little research and then spat onto paper, there isn't much inquiry involved. However, if the question leads to the mind wandering and the answering of other related questions, there is a lot of inquiry involved. Simple as that!