The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge
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THE USEFULNESS OF USELESS KNOWLEDGE BY ABRAHAM FLEXNER IT not a curious fact that in a world mental problems. I have no quarrel rsteeped in irrational hatreds which with this tendency. The world in which threaten civilization itself, men and we live is the only world about which our women-old and young-detach them- senses can testify. Unless it is made a selves wholly or partly from the angry better world, a fairer world, millions current of daily life to devote themselves will continue to go to their graves to the cultivation of beauty, to the exten- silent, saddened, and embittered. I sion of knowledge, to the cure of disease, have myself spent many years pleading to the amelioration of suffering, just as that our schools should become more though fanatics were not simultaneously acutely aware of the world in which engaged in spreading pain, ugliness, and their pupils and students are destined to suffering? The world has always been a pass their lives. Now I sometimes won- sorry and confused sort of place-yet der whether that current has not become poets and artists and scientists have ig- too strong and whether there would be nored the factors that would, if attended sufficient opportunity for a full life if to, paralyze them. From a practical the world were emptied of some of the point of view, intellectual and spiritual useless things that give it spiritual sig- life is, on the surface, a useless form of nificance; in other words, whether our activity, in which men indulge because conception of what .is useful may not they procure for themselves greater satis- have become too narrow to be adequate factions than are otherwise obtainable. to the roaming and capricious possibili- In this paper I shall concern myself with ties of the human spirit. the question of the extent to which the We may look at this question from two pursuit of these uselesssatisfactions proves points of view: the scientific and the unexpectedly the source from which un- humanistic or spiritual. Let us take the dreamed-of utility is derived. scientific first. I recall a conversation We hear it said with tiresome iteration which I had some years ago with Mr. that ours is a materialistic age, the main George Eastman on the subject of use. concern of which should be the wider Mr. Eastman, a wise and gentle far- distribution of material goods and worldly seeing man, gifted with taste in music opportunities. The justified outcry of and art, had been saying to me that he those who through no fault of their own meant to devote his vast fortune to the are deprived of opportunity and a fair promotion of education in useful sub- share of worldly goods therefore diverts jects. I ventured to ask him whom he an increasing number of students from regarded as the most useful worker in the studies which their fathers pursued to science in the world. He replied in- the equally important and no less urgent stantaneously: "Marconi." I surprised study of social, economic, and govern- him by sayin~, "Whatever pleasure we THE USEFULNESS OF USELESS KNOWLEDGE 545 derive from the radio or however wireless and Maxwell were geniuses without and the radio may have added to human thought of use. Marconi was a clever life, Marconi's share was practically inventor with no thought but use. negligible. " The mention of Hertz's name recalled I shall not forget his astonishment on to Mr. Eastman the Hertzian waves, and I this occasion. He asked me to explain. suggested that he might ask the physicists I replied to him somewhat as follows: of the University of Rochester precisely "Mr. Eastman, Marconi was inevita- what Hertz and Maxwell had done; but ble. The real credit for everything that one thing I said he could be sure of, has been done in the field of wireless namely, that they had done their work belongs, as far as such fundamental credit without thought of use and that through- can be definitely assigned to anyone, to out the whole history of science most of Professor Clerk Maxwell, who in 1865 the really great discoveries which had carried out certain abstruse and remote ultimately proved to be beneficial to calculations in the field of magnetism mankind had been made by men and and electricity. Maxwell reproduced women who were driven not by the de- his abstract equations in a treatise pub- sire to be useful but merely the desire to lished in 1873. At the next meeting of satisfy their curiosity. the British Association Professor H.]. S. "Curiosity?" asked Mr. Eastman. Smith of Oxford declared that 'no mathe- "Yes," I replied, "curiosity, which matician can turn over the pages of these mayor may not eventuate in something volumes without realizing that they con- useful, is probably the outstanding char- tain a theory which has already added acteristic of modern thinking. It is not largely to the methods and resources of new. It goes back to Galileo, Bacon, pure mathematics.' Other discoveries and to Sir Isaac Newton, and it must be supplemented Maxwell's theoretical work absolutely unhampered. Institutions of during the next fifteen years. Finally in learning should be devoted to the culti- 1887 and 1888 the scientific problem still vation of curiosity and the less they are remaining-the detection and demon- deflected by considerations of immediacy stration of the electromagnetic waves of application, the more likely they are to which are the carriers of wireless signals contribute not only to human welfare -was solved by Heinrich Hertz, a worker but to the equally important satisfaction in Helmholtz's laboratory in Berlin. of intellectual interest which may indeed Neither Maxwell nor Hertz had any con- be said to have become the ruling passion cern about the utility of their work; no of intellectual life in modern times." such thought ever entered their minds. They had no practical objective. The II inventor in the legal sense was of course Marconi, but what did Marconi invent? What is true of Heinrich Hertz work- Merely the last technical detail, mainly ing quietly and unnoticed in a corner of the now obsolete receiving device called Helmholtz's laboratory in the later years coherer, almost universally discarded." of the nineteenth century may be said of Hertz and Maxwell could invent noth- scientists and mathematicians the world ing, but it was their useless theoretical over for several centuries past. We live work which was seized upon by a clever in a world that would be helpless without technician and which has created new electricity. Called upon to mention a means for communication, utility, and discovery of the most immediate and far- amusement by which men whose merits reaching practical use we might well agree are relatively slight have obtained fame upon electricity. But who made the and earned millions. Who were the fundamental discoveries out of which the useful men? Not Marconi, but Clerk entire electrical development of more Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz. Hertz than one hundred years has come? 546 HARPER'S MAGAZINE The answer is interesting. Michael phasize the fact that the part played by Faraday's father was a blacksmith; science in making war more destructive Michael himself was apprenticed to a and more horrible was an unconscious bookbinder. In 1812, when he was al- and unintended by-product of scientific ready twenty-one years of age, a friend activity. Lord Rayleigh, president of took him to the Royal Institution where the British Association for the Advance- he heard Sir Humphrey Davy deliver ment of Science, in a recent address four lectures on chemical subjects. He points out in detail how the folly of man, kept notes and sent a copy of them to not the intention of the scientists, is re- Davy. The very next year, 1813, he sponsible for the destructive use of the became an assistant in Davy's laboratory, agents employed in modern warfare. working on chemical problems. Two The innocent study of the chemistry of years later he accompanied Davy on a carbon compounds, which has led to trip to the Continent. In 1825, when infinite beneficial results, showed that the he was thirty-four years of age, he became action of nitric acid on substances like Director of the Laboratory of the Royal benzene, glycerine, cellulose, etc., re- Institution where he spent fifty-four years sulted not only in the beneficent aniline of his life. dye industry but in the creation of nitro- Faraday's interest soon shifted from glycerine, which has uses good and bad. chemistry to electricity and magnetism, Somewhat later Alfred Nobel, turning to to which he devoted the rest of his active the same subject, showed that by mixing life. Important but puzzling work in nitro-glycerine with other substances, this field had been previously accom- solid explosives which could be safely plished by Oersted, Ampere, and Wol- handled could be produced-among laston. Faraday cleared away the diffi- others, dynamite. It is to dynamite that culties which they had left unsolved and we owe our progress in mining, in the by 1841 had succeeded in the task of in- making of such railroad tunnels as those duction of the electric current. Four which now pierce the Alps and other years later a second and equally brilliant mountain ranges; but of course dynamite epoch in his career opened when he dis- has been abused by politicians and sol- covered the effect of magnetism on polar- diers. Scientists are, however, no more ized light. His earlier discoveries have to blame than they are to blame for an led to the infinite number of practical earthquake or a flood.