"Scientific discovery and scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of it without any practical purpose whatsoever in view"
About this Quote
Planck is throwing a polite grenade at the idea that science should justify itself on a quarterly earnings call. The line is structured like a moral law: discovery and knowledge "have been achieved only" by people who chase understanding with "no practical purpose whatsoever". That absolutism is doing rhetorical work. It sweeps away the comforting myth that innovation is a straight pipeline from problem to product, replacing it with a more inconvenient story: the biggest leaps arrive sideways, from curiosity that looks useless until history catches up.
The subtext is defensive and strategic. Planck, a founder of quantum theory, knew firsthand how fundamental research begins as an affront to common sense and to institutional patience. Quantum ideas were born not from a drive to build gadgets but from trying to reconcile stubborn anomalies in blackbody radiation. Yet those "impractical" puzzles eventually underwrote the technologies that define modern life. His point isn't that applications are bad; it's that aiming directly at them can narrow the imagination, bias what gets measured, and punish the kind of risk that breakthroughs require.
Context matters: Planck lived through an era when German science was becoming professionalized and increasingly entangled with industry and the state, then later warped by ideology and war. Against that backdrop, the quote reads as a plea for intellectual autonomy. He frames pure inquiry as the necessary precondition for any real utility, and he does it with the severity of someone who has watched curiosity get audited, weaponized, and misunderstood.
The subtext is defensive and strategic. Planck, a founder of quantum theory, knew firsthand how fundamental research begins as an affront to common sense and to institutional patience. Quantum ideas were born not from a drive to build gadgets but from trying to reconcile stubborn anomalies in blackbody radiation. Yet those "impractical" puzzles eventually underwrote the technologies that define modern life. His point isn't that applications are bad; it's that aiming directly at them can narrow the imagination, bias what gets measured, and punish the kind of risk that breakthroughs require.
Context matters: Planck lived through an era when German science was becoming professionalized and increasingly entangled with industry and the state, then later warped by ideology and war. Against that backdrop, the quote reads as a plea for intellectual autonomy. He frames pure inquiry as the necessary precondition for any real utility, and he does it with the severity of someone who has watched curiosity get audited, weaponized, and misunderstood.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
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