📝Usefulness of Useless Knowledge -Abraham Flexner

Usefulness of Useless Knowledge

Abraham Flexner, with great emphasis, takes us through a conversation he had with Mr. George Eastman (founder of Eastman Kodak Co.) a few years before 1939. Discussing remarkable discoveries of their time, Flexner argues that the mere desire to satisfy one’s curiosity is what brings new things to the table. He complains that educational institutes, instead of being devoted to the cultivation of curiosity, happen to be deflected by their need to be immediate in their application of knowledge. [No-Curiosity may kill the cat with an even sadder death!] He digs deeper with examples of Heinrich Hertz, Ehrlich and Rutherford and Einstein into how credit goes to the people who left unsolved puzzle pieces behind, ready for scientists to take forward! He pleads the abolition of the word ‘use’ when it comes to scientific discoveries, to free the human spirit into its own unique expression. It’s own world of curiosity, unbounded by the constrains of delivery and time.

“Now I sometimes wonder, whether that current has not become too strong and whether there would be sufficient opportunity for a full life if the world were emptied of some of the things that give it spiritual significance; in other words, whether our conception of what is useful may not have become too narrow to be adequate to the roaming and capricious possibilities of the human spirit.”-Abraham Flexner