ABSTRACT
Applied science has a clear purpose: it serves our welfare and security. But what about pure science? What justification is there in scientific studies which have no visible practical use? Until fairly recently it used to be commonly assumed that such studies served their own purpose, the discovery of knowledge for the love of truth. Do we still accept that view? Do we still believe that it is proper for a scientist to spend public funds for the pursuit of studies such as, say, the proof of Fermat's theorem —or the counting of the number of electrons in the universe: studies which, though perhaps not lacking in some remote possibility of practical usefulness, are at any rate as unlikely to yield a material dividend as any human activity within the realms of sanity? No, we do not generally accept the view today, as we did until the nineteen-thirties, that it is proper for science to pursue knowledge for its own sake, regardless of any advantage to the welfare of society. Nor is the change due to altered circumstances, but it represents a fundamental turn of popular opinion, induced by a definite philosophical movement of recent times.
