Curiosity vs. Problem-Solving: “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge”

In other posts, I have argued that Donald Stokes’ notion of “Pasteur’s Quadrant,” was a useful rubric to guide the selection of targets for one’s scholarship. The notion makes the point that when a scholar is motivated by solving a problem in the real world (e.g., an incomplete execution of an artistic thrust, an apparent anomaly in a manufacturing process), often the solution leads to some more fundamental principles that contribute to basic knowledge far away from the original problem. That is, sometimes practical solutions of one problem lead to new theories, applicable to whole hosts of other problems.

I recently came across a 1939 article entitled, “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge” by Abraham Flexner, one of the founders of the Institute for Advanced Study. It employs a line of logic that is rarer today than perhaps in prior years. In short, through a set of examples, it notes the importance of the unfettered pursuit of knowledge. It applauds the curiosity- driven choice of activity of scholars. The creation of new forms of thinking are valued as their own end – the expansion of things that humans know.

We live in a time of rapid technological change. The rise of the internet has linked together vast parts of humanity globally. Miniaturization of silicon-chip circuitry permits computational feats unimaginable in smart phones. Artificial intelligence advances are in their exponential growth phase. Since these achievements have direct effect on the day-to-day lives of billions of people, they are the subject of much popular media. In contrast, media treatment of basic scholarship suffers the dual burden of not being well-understood by journalists and of not directly impacting the average person.

It remains an open question, however, what the fastest route to innovation that improves the lives of the maximum number of people. How much should a society support the curiosity-driven pursuit of knowledge for its own sake versus the application of knowledge in new inventions directly impacting persons?

The Flexner piece provides example after example of work driven by the passion of the scholar. Working at all hours of the day and night to perfect their insights into a puzzle they were trying to solve. For example, he mentions early work on the chemistry of carbon compounds leading to the creation of nitroglycerine, which much later led to application in the creation of dynamite. Or, more benignly, basic theories and mathematics of an “ideal gas” by Einstein in 1925, coming much later to explain why liquid helium at a very, very low temperature flows better, not worse than at higher temperatures, an unexplained exception to the rule of other liquids.

He asserts that the most important discoveries came by minds who were uninterested in any particular use of the discoveries but merely seeking the joy of seeing the discovery emerge. Flexner misses one opportunity for applying the argument to the humanities. First, the scholar of art or poetry or literature often has that essential thirst to build a new creation. Their creation, when absorbed by others, often lead to very practical outcomes – an emotion is evoked, an inference about one’s own life is made, an interpretation of others’ behaviors is crystallized. The applications of the basic work can be as varied as the number of observers of it. The power of the humanities is their ability to evoke a multitude of impacts. Second, some of the product of humanists is left underappreciated for time, just as basic findings in the sciences sometimes find no application for decades. In the same sense, the words or images of the scholar seem to be too far ahead of the society, but the society catches up and rediscovers the work, with deep appreciation rare at the time of its creation.

Flexner notes “a poem, a symphony, a painting, a mathematical truth, a new scientific fact, all bear in themselves all the justification that universities, colleges, and institutes of research need or require.” All of these observations beg a question: “If improvement to humankind is a goal, how should the scholar allocate their time between basic observations/creation and application of knowledge in direct service to others?”