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Blue_Tires

(55,445 posts)
Tue Mar 18, 2014, 01:16 PM Mar 2014

The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge

“The real enemy is the man who tries to mold the human spirit so that it will not dare to spread its wings.”

In an age obsessed with practicality, productivity, and efficiency, I frequently worry that we are leaving little room for abstract knowledge and for the kind of curiosity that invites just enough serendipity to allow for the discovery of ideas we didn’t know we were interested in until we are, ideas that we may later transform into new combinations with applications both practical and metaphysical.

This concern, it turns out, is hardly new. In The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (PDF), originally published in the October 1939 issue of Harper’s, American educator Abraham Flexner explores this dangerous tendency to forgo pure curiosity in favor of pragmatism — in science, in education, and in human thought at large — to deliver a poignant critique of the motives encouraged in young minds, contrasting those with the drivers that motivated some of history’s most landmark discoveries.


We hear it said with tiresome iteration that ours is a materialistic age, the main concern of which should be the wider distribution of material goods and worldly opportunities. The justified outcry of those who through no fault of their own are deprived of opportunity and a fair share of worldly goods therefore diverts an increasing number of students from the studies which their fathers pursued to the equally important and no less urgent study of social, economic, and governmental problems. I have no quarrel with this tendency. The world in which we live is the only world about which our senses can testify. Unless it is made a better world, a fairer world, millions will continue to go to their graves silent, saddened, and embittered. I have myself spent many years pleading that our schools should become more acutely aware of the world in which their pupils and students are destined to pass their lives. 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 useless 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.

Flexner goes on to explore the question from two points of view — the scientific and the humanistic, or spiritual — and recounts a conversation with legendary entrepreneur and Kodak founder George Eastman, in which the two debate who “the most useful worker in science in the world” is. Eastman points to radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi, but Flexner stumps Eastman by arguing that, despite his invention, Marconi’s impact on improving human life was “practically negligible.” His explanation bespeaks a familiar subject — combinatorial creativity and the additive nature of invention:

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/07/27/the-usefulness-of-useless-knowledge/

http://library.ias.edu/files/UsefulnessHarpers.pdf

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The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (Original Post) Blue_Tires Mar 2014 OP
K&R.... daleanime Mar 2014 #1
Excellent piece seabeckind Mar 2014 #2
My dad was very much into "random facts" Blue_Tires Mar 2014 #4
Very much taken with these articles... seabeckind Mar 2014 #3
Moral speculation must come under this heading pscot Mar 2014 #5

seabeckind

(1,957 posts)
2. Excellent piece
Wed Mar 19, 2014, 07:55 AM
Mar 2014

I have always believed that the key to innovation is a very broad educational experience. Not necessarily limited to the classroom but the attitude in the nurturing environment...

books, observation, interpretation....

and most of all: opportunity. The last defined as being able to live outside survival mode.

Blue_Tires

(55,445 posts)
4. My dad was very much into "random facts"
Wed Mar 19, 2014, 11:23 AM
Mar 2014

and the "did you know" types of books...Bought them for me regularly when I was a kid, too...Our home had shelves full of them back in the day...

seabeckind

(1,957 posts)
3. Very much taken with these articles...
Wed Mar 19, 2014, 08:13 AM
Mar 2014

I thought I might go to my FB page and share the experience.

The first thing I saw was a poster: Smart People Drink Local Beer

The second was a FB ad for American Idol -- which I immediately flagged as "I don't want to see this" and No, I don't want to say why. The second question just re-insulted my intelligence.

Then there were some pet pics...

So I just logged back out.

pscot

(21,023 posts)
5. Moral speculation must come under this heading
Wed Mar 19, 2014, 12:30 PM
Mar 2014

Americans seem to have abandoned it completely. Doen't matter if a thing is right or wrong. Those are relative concepts. The only question is, "does it pay?".

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