In 1933, a unique institution of thinking was founded, known as the Institute of Advanced Study. It was the brainchild of Abraham Flexner and found its home on the campus of Princeton University.
The IAS served as an intellectual haven for 20th century geniuses such as Einstein, Von Neumann, and Dirac. It was a place where these brilliant minds could devise ideas that had no immediate utility. In this sense, they might appear useless.
In his essay, Flexner gets into the essence of thinking and how human progress is deeply intertwined with the almost innocent quality of curiosity:
“Curiosity, which may or may not eventuate in something useful, is probably the outstanding characteristic of modern thinking. It is not new. It goes back to Galileo, Bacon, and Sir Isaac Newton, and it must be absolutely unhampered. Institutions of learning should be devoted to the cultivation of curiosity and the less they are deflected by considerations of immediacy of application, they more like they are to contribute not only to human welfare but to the equally important satisfaction of intellectual interest which may indeed be said to have become the ruling passion of intellectual life in modern times.”
Flexner goes on to emphasize that bringing a product to market is just the final step in a long line of inventive thinking. Figures like Marconi merely added the finishing touches on innovations that would not have been possible without the earlier genius of individuals like Maxwell and Hertz.
Flexner also writes of Faraday, who laid the groundwork for Maxwell’s equations of electro-magnetism:
“At no period in his unmatched career was he interested in utility. He was absorbed in disentangling the riddles of the universe, at first chemical riddles, in later periods, physical riddles.”
These names may seem antique, but they are the people who are responsible for the modern conveniences we take for granted in our daily lives.
Flexner's essay was penned in 1939, on the eve of World War Two, by a Jewish intellectual. Flexner could not have foreseen the coming horrors, but his central theme remains pertinent as ever:
“The real enemy of the human race is not the fearless and irresponsible thinker, be he right or wrong. The real enemy is the man who tries to mold the human spirit so that is will not dare spread its wings, as its wings were once spread in Italy and Germany, as well as Great Britain and the United States.”
In a time when self-identification increasingly leans into religion and skin color, Flexner wondered if this was not distracting us from the real prize:
“In the face of history of the human race what can be more silly or ridiculous than likes or dislikes founded upon race or religion? Does humanity want symphonies and paintings and profound scientific truth, or does it want Christian symphonies, Christian paintings, Christian science, or Jewish symphonies, Jewish science, of Mohammedan and or Egyptian or Japanese of Chinese or American or German or Russian or Communist or Conservative contributions to and expressions of the infinite richness of the human soul?”
Ultimately, higher education should be the education that best equips us to elevate the world, irrespective of individual beliefs. It should be a realm of profound curiosity and should not be burdened by the need for immediate utility. That will naturally follow.
Flexner envisioned the Institute for Advanced Study as a permissible luxury in a world increasingly dominated by specialization and the demand for material outputs. He imagined a utopia, and advocated for more such places:
“We make ourselves no promises, but we cherish the hope that the unobstructed pursuit of useless knowledge will prove to have consequences in the future as in the past. Not for a moment, however, do we defend the Institute on that ground. It exists as a paradise for scholars who, like poets and musicians, have won the right to do as they please and who accomplish most when enabled to do so.”
