Book Review-The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge By Abraham Flexner

This little monograph gives us two related essays. The first essay is contemporary and written by Robbert Dijkgraaf, the present director of the Institute of Advanced Studies. In this essay he serves up a history lesson of sorts, giving us some autobiographical detail on Abraham Flexner, the founding director of the Institute of Advanced Studies. He goes into the Flexner’s beliefs which was the founding principles of the Institute as well as its role in the history of American innovation as the place where creativity and research into basic and fundamental research takes place. He goes into how the founding belief in the meaning of the title forms the guiding principle of the institution. He very nicely frames Flexner’s basic belief. We are then given Flexner’s original essay on why seemingly useless knowledge is more important than just practical knowledge; indeed, should be the bedrock principles of scientific and humanities research in the United States.

You can read the passion and purpose in Flexner’s essay, he resolutely defends his idea against every plausible objection anyone can raise in opposition. It is inspirational to read this essay, written in 1939, it demonstrates just how prescient Flexner was in insisting that the Institute of Advanced Studies be the exception to the pragmatic tendencies of American science and resist the commercial bent of the American mindset.

Dijkgraaf skillfully demonstrates, with the examples from the Institute’s history, of just how the useless knowledge being pursued by the researchers at the Institute end up contributing to the applied knowledge of the world. In a way, the contemporary essay serves as vindication of Flexner’s conviction.

This book will be read many times, as a beacon for myself when my belief for basic research is faltering.

Blog Post-Trite

I transitioned from Isaac Newton Junior High to Arapahoe High School, going to the big school with all its attendant cliques and high school social drama.

I was also transitioning from special English to a regular English class. I started to learn English when I was nine years old in Central America, and by the time my family moved to Littleton Colorado, I was speaking and understanding the English language, but I was still quite self-conscious about my written English. As I was destined to be an engineer, at least in my mind, I paid very little attention to the English classes that was required. It was yet another obstacle to be feared and survived as I made my way into engineering; that transition from special English to regular English was also a point of pride with me, as I was moving into the mainstream. Additionally,  this particular transition is also disguised by the fact that everyone else is going to a new school, where we had no history, I was going to slip in unnoticed, I hoped.

My first English teacher at Arapahoe was Rahn Anderson, an extrovert and a beloved younger teacher who had the energy to out enthuse all of us. I was an introvert, made more so by being a someone that doesn’t stand out. I tried to fly under the radar as much as possible but I was not able to escape Mr. Anderson’s eagle eyes all the time.

Mr. Anderson delighted in the practice of the impromptu, an extemporaneous essay written in class. He loved the challenge that the impromptu presented to us, I considered it a death sentence. It was during one of these impromptus that I learned the definition of the word trite. I received one of my essays back after a dreaded impromptu assignments with the word trite written over a paragraph that was circled in red.

In class, Mr. Anderson explained to us what trite meant: overused and consequently of little import while lacking originality or freshness. He further expounded on the evil of using trite and clichéd phrases. Amazingly enough, that lesson stuck with me through the rest of my life. My writing may not have improved but I have always checked myself when I read or wrote, or thought. I further extended that idea of trite to thoughts and ideas, readings, music, even to jokes and stories.

Every time I saw unoriginal phrases and ideas I avoided them, I elevated my expectations and made it my daily mission to never tell the same joke twice to the same crowd; I became much more sensitive to the words and phrases that I read as well as the words that I wrote.  I became impatient with people who told the same stories the same way all the time.

I grew to be an expert at spotting things that are trite, at least by my exacting standards, and I also became a connoisseur of the most overt offenders of my own sensitive palate for originality.  

This heightened awareness also made me delve deeper into language and thought, it made me think about how the great writers express themselves. I never made parsing sentences as habit, but I did learn to appreciate the well-turned phrase and the clever sentence structure. I reveled in all the ingenious ways that sentiments can be expressed, with originality.

Digging even further, as I became a better writer, I learned to appreciate the different forms of the English language. I came to appreciate the long form essay, the personal essay, the writings of people that I never thought I would ever read, since I was still a stereotypical engineer.

In recent years, I started to gain an appreciation for poetry. The most precise and imaginative form of writing, even though I am terrible at writing original poetry, I know what good poetry is: simple, spare, and definitely not trite.

As I move through this life, I look back on the simple and unexpected things that had moved me and shaped my thinking along the way, and that simple and unexpected lesson in trite definitely molded me in more ways than I could have imagined. 

Thanks Mr. Anderson.