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The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R248
Discovery Miles 2 480
You Save: R29
(10%)
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The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (Hardcover)
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List price R277
Loot Price R248
Discovery Miles 2 480
You Save R29 (10%)
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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A short, provocative book about why "useless" science often leads
to humanity's greatest technological breakthroughs A forty-year
tightening of funding for scientific research has meant that
resources are increasingly directed toward applied or practical
outcomes, with the intent of creating products of immediate value.
In such a scenario, it makes sense to focus on the most
identifiable and urgent problems, right? Actually, it doesn't. In
his classic essay "The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge," Abraham
Flexner, the founding director of the Institute for Advanced Study
in Princeton and the man who helped bring Albert Einstein to the
United States, describes a great paradox of scientific research.
The search for answers to deep questions, motivated solely by
curiosity and without concern for applications, often leads not
only to the greatest scientific discoveries but also to the most
revolutionary technological breakthroughs. In short, no quantum
mechanics, no computer chips. This brief book includes Flexner's
timeless 1939 essay alongside a new companion essay by Robbert
Dijkgraaf, the Institute's current director, in which he shows that
Flexner's defense of the value of "the unobstructed pursuit of
useless knowledge" may be even more relevant today than it was in
the early twentieth century. Dijkgraaf describes how basic research
has led to major transformations in the past century and explains
why it is an essential precondition of innovation and the first
step in social and cultural change. He makes the case that society
can achieve deeper understanding and practical progress today and
tomorrow only by truly valuing and substantially funding the
curiosity-driven "pursuit of useless knowledge" in both the
sciences and the humanities.
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