The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge

Flexner argues that the most transformative practical advances in science and technology have come not from goal-directed invention but from curiosity-driven "useless" research. His central claim: institutions of learning should cultivate curiosity without regard to immediate application, because history shows that undirected inquiry consistently produces undreamed-of utility.

The essay's most vivid example is the development of radio. Flexner recounts surprising George Eastman by arguing that Marconi merely assembled the last technical detail — the real credit belongs to Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz, who pursued abstruse theoretical work in electromagnetism with no thought of practical use. The pattern repeats across domains: Faraday's curiosity about electricity and magnetism (not utility) enabled the electrical age; Gauss's non-Euclidean geometry, unpublished for 25 years out of fear of ridicule, later made relativity possible; group theory, an abstract mathematical diversion, became the basis of quantum spectroscopy; Ehrlich's "fooling" with dyes in anatomy class led to modern blood diagnostics.

Flexner is not claiming that everything produced in laboratories will prove useful, nor that utility justifies the work. His deeper argument is for the abolition of the word "use" as a criterion altogether — the human spirit needs freedom to roam. He describes the newly founded Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (where Einstein, Weyl, and von Neumann found refuge from Hitler) as an embodiment of this philosophy: no duties, no committees, no faculty meetings — just "opportunities." The essay closes with a defense of untrammeled academic freedom against the totalitarian clamping-down then underway in Germany and Italy.