Over 200 years ago, at the beginning of 1782, the German physicist and philosopher Christof Lichtenberg wrote in his diary: To invent an infallible remedy against toothache, which would take it away in a moment, might be as valuable and more than to discover a new planet... but I do not know how to start the diary of this year with a more important topic than the news of the new planet. He was referring to the planet Uranus, discovered in 1781. The question Lichtenberg implicitly raised, of the relative importance of looking for technical solutions to specific problems, and of searching for new fundamental knowledge, is even more pertinent today than it was 200 years ago. In this paper I shall argue that the search for fundamental knowledge, motivated by curiosity, is as useful as the search for solutions to specific problems. The reasons we have practical computers now, and did not have them 100 years ago, is not that meanwhile we have discovered the need for computers. It is because of discoveries in fundamental physics which underwrite modern electronics, developments in mathematical logic, and the need of nuclear physicists in the 1930s to develop ways of counting particles.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 17:34:12 +0000
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