Useless Versus Useful Knowledge

editorial Useless versus useful knowledge

The idea that science proceeds from ‘pure’ curiosity to applications is too simplistic — and always has been.

It is fitting that the Nobel committee As a celebration of the value of abstract chooses to take a broad view of Alfred thought, Flexner’s essay remains elegant and Nobel’s wish that the prizes be awarded to pertinent. As an analysis of the interactions those whose achievements “have conferred between theory and application in science, it the greatest benefit to mankind.” Taken probably represents a widespread view today too much at face value, that could be a — but that doesn’t make it any the less flawed. highly utilitarian prescription, favouring Flexner recounts telling George Eastman those who develop practical applications that it was James Clerk Maxwell, who had (or whose insights have led to them) “no practical objective”, and not Marconi, rather than those whose work remains in who deserved credit for the invention of the realm problematically labelled ‘pure radio broadcasting. What he omits is that science’. More than a few awards, especially the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, in physics, would never have been given if where Maxwell worked as the first director, usefulness were the criterion. was established specifically to improve the But views on the relationship between practical training of British physicists and so-called pure and applied science are engineers — a concern prompted partly by sometimes still little advanced beyond the failure in laying the first transatlantic C. P. Snow’s comment in his ‘Two Cultures’ telegraph cable in 1858. Michael Faraday lecture in 1959: “Pure scientists have by and too allegedly cared nothing for “the question large been dim-witted about engineers and of utility” in his electrical researches; in applied science… Their instinct… was to reality he was dealing with plenty of queries

take it for granted that applied science was about it, and no one would doubt the PHOTO STOCK / ALAMY IMAGES HISTORY SCIENCE an occupation for second-rate minds.” As practical acumen of his mentor at the Royal biologist Peter Medawar said around the Institution, Humphry Davy. And so it goes same time, the distinction was often seen on further back in time: Flexner asserts questions (as, in fairness, Flexner as that “between polite and rude learning, that Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon were acknowledges). Conversely, scientists who do between the laudably useless and the vulgarly motivated by pure curiosity, whereas Newton want to find applications need guidance and applied, the free and the intellectually and his contemporaries were inventors as training if they are not to approach industry compromised, the poetic and the mundane.” much as philosophers, and Bacon’s entire and the marketplace naively. British Nobel laureate chemist George Porter programme of state-sponsored fact-collection Second, it is all too easy for pure sought cannily to erode the elitist implication outlined in Novum Organum (1620) was science to deny ethical responsibility, by dividing research instead into ‘applied’ predicated on the “relief of man’s estate”, as almost by definition. Flexner insists that and ‘not yet applied’. well as providing a vehicle of state power. chemical warfare came from innocent Debate about curiosity-driven research Getting this history of the applied science. We now know it was no accident can still hover on the brink of such potential of curiosity right matters for several on Fritz Haber’s part, who is said to have hierarchical attitudes, however. Making a reasons. First, it reminds us of the value of the described it as “a higher form of killing”2. case for research not driven by short-term broader, worldly view in scientific training. The year before Flexner’s essay appeared, applied goals — by knowledge-creation Yes, serendipity has spawned many useful James Kendall, professor of chemistry rather than wealth-creation — is ever more discoveries, but generally when it strikes the at Edinburgh, defended that view while important in a funding climate that seems “prepared mind” — as Louis Pasteur, the conducting research on chemical weapons3. increasingly to demand that proposals be paragon of a scientist happy to turn his mind Happily, the introductory essay to the pitched along economic lines, supported by to practical problems, declared. Not only was new book, by the IAS’s current director arbitrary metrics of impact. The converse William Perkin trying to make something Robert Dijkgraaf, is more nuanced on appeal to ‘spin-offs’ to justify fundamental useful (quinine) when he stumbled upon such matters. research in, say, quantum or particle physics the first aniline dye, but he only thought to It is unwise, not least in a discipline as is no less disheartening. exploit the discovery because he was aware of practically driven as materials science, to But there’s nothing new in a defence how industrially valuable a good purple dye idealize the interaction of curiosity and of sheer curiosity as a vital motivation might be. Not only is it often an application application. Problems are no less intellectual for science. The case was put in a 1939 that stimulates some lucky discovery leading (or difficult) for being practical ones, and essay called ‘The usefulness of useless elsewhere — carbon-fibre technology leading one’s recondite theory will not be sullied by knowledge’ by Abraham Flexner (pictured), to carbon nanotubes, say — but practical ideas of how to put it to use. ❐ founding director of the Princeton Institute questions can themselves motivate new pure for Advanced Study (IAS) where, in the science. Who knows if topological quantum References 1930s, Albert Einstein worked alongside materials will produce anything useful? It 1. Flexner, A. The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (Princeton Univ. Press, 2017). John von Neumann and Hermann Weyl. shouldn’t matter if they do or not, but an eye 2. Harris, R. & Paxman, J. A Higher Form of Killing (Arrow, 2002). The essay has recently been republished1. on applications can initiate new fundamental 3. Kendall, J. Breathe Freely! (Appleton-Century, 1938).