Last time I did a post
on the philantrophy
of Warren Buffet. In his conversations Buffet mentioned a philanthropist that no one else knew about and that was “Abraham Flexner”. I did some research
on Flexner and learned that he truly did change the face of medicine in America,
but Flexner also brought to light a philosophy on education reform that is very
relevant today.
Flexner believed that people detach themselves from the
realities of everyday life to devote themselves to engagement in other things
they prefer, perhaps to escape the tedium of the days. The world today and even
before that has been in a sorry state, and people tend to ignore the factors
which impact them most. There is much wrong in this world already, and unless
there is a conscious effort to change that, the world will continue to be in
its sorry state. Whether there will be sufficient opportunities to lead a full
life, in other words, whether we will find purpose in what we deem useful is a
more philosophical question, for our definition of what’s useful might have
become too narrow.
Flexner
once posed a question to George Eastman –“Who is the most useful worker in the
field of science?” and the reply came back as “Marconi”. But the truth is that Marconi
was not the inventor, but merely the aggregator of the findings of others
before him. Maxwell and Hertz had done most of the work well before Marconi,
and neither were they concerned with the utility nor the practical objectives of
their developments.
The entire history of science is filled with people who did what
the did merely to satisfy their curiosity. ‘Curiosity’ was the only thing the
were concerned with and they satisfied their spiritual selves with such
undertakings.
Institutions of education and learning should be devoted to
cultivation of curiosity rather than immediate
application, and by doing this, they are more likely to contribute to human
welfare.
But Flexner also noted that - “It is merely the folly of man and
not the intention of scientists that is responsible for the destructive use of agents
employed in modern warfare”. Take machines for example, which originally
started with the invention of the printing press and for the greater good of
mankind, but soon turned into unmanned drones designed strictly to spy
and kill.
Alfred Noble, whose name is attached to establishment of the
Nobel Prizes, made his wealth by producing commercial dynamite, which found its
use in mining, railroad tunnel establishment, but also of course to the abuse
of politicians for warfare.
The Wright brothers built the airplane with the dream and
obsession to fly like the birds, but politicians with their corrupt minds again
found its purpose in warfare.
Perhaps it is also true that blaming Quant’s for inventing derivatives
is also a misdirected
exercise. The greed of humanity has existed since its existence; only the
tools have changed.
Marc Anderson recently at the Deal
breaker Conference recently said that people who majored in English will
end up working at shoe stores, but such statements discount the capacity of humans
to apply and borrow knowledge from different spectrum's and apply it somewhere
else(I emphasized this in my post on Andrew
Carnegie).
No educational institution can possibly direct the channels
in which someone should work. Knowledge can only be acquired if one makes an
effort to acquire it; no one can force learning on anyone else. Thus such eccentric
but curious pursuits, perhaps aren't wasteful at all.
But this is not to criticize institutions who make an effort
to integrate applied learning(STEM sector degrees, or business school perhaps?),
but only to state that the useless is a feeder to the useful. Marconi was successful
because he picked the brains of right men. This also points to the fact that
any scientific discovery is rarely attributed to a sole inventor, the most
critical example here is Tesla(and if you don’t know who that is, please do
this world a favor and read this)
Even in the pursuit of the practical an enormous amount of
useless activity goes on. The mere fact that they bring satisfaction to an
individual is all the justification that is needed. Flexner also mentioned that
such motivation runs deeper than any other since it has to deal with the
dissimilarities of humanity:
“Does humanity want symphonies and paintings
and profound scientific truth, or does it want Christian symphonies, Christian
paintings, Christian science, or Jewish symphonies, Jewish paintings, Jewish
science, or Mohammedan or Egyptian or Japanese or Chinese or American or German
or Russian or Communist or conservative
contributions…”
A Harvard professor was once offered a stipend to move to
Princeton; on the offer he asked-“What are my duties?” To which the Flexner
replied -“There are no duties – only opportunities.”
Perhaps if we all start seeing the world as a land of
opportunities, we can also find and pick the brains of others who have been
busy doing useless things. Maybe innovation really is just finding the catalyst
or becoming the catalyst to whatever useless stuff there is already out there.
Socrates once said that –“An unexplained life isn’t really
worth living for”. I hope that you continue to leave nothing unexplained and
set only one goal for yourself for next year – and that is to continue a
pursuit for useless knowledge that will have consequences in the future that
won’t be so useless after all.
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