True, but this is also a stunning example of survivorship bias.
Countless other mathematical curiosities were developed in the 1700s -- and forgotten. Calculus just happens to be the one that found practical applications later, so that's the one that's well known today.
It's difficult to draw the conclusion that "every possible branch of learning ought to be funded" by appealing to "later practical value" based on this cherrypicked example.
On the other hand, clearly _some_ novel theoretical work with no apparent immediate value _does_ yield real world benefit later.
Since we lack the resources to fund every PhD with a crazy theory on what the next new subfield ought to be, how do we decide?
Seems like AI could help massively there, by removing a huge bottleneck around technical elaboration and application seeking.
Countless other mathematical curiosities were developed in the 1700s -- and forgotten. Calculus just happens to be the one that found practical applications later, so that's the one that's well known today.
It's difficult to draw the conclusion that "every possible branch of learning ought to be funded" by appealing to "later practical value" based on this cherrypicked example.
On the other hand, clearly _some_ novel theoretical work with no apparent immediate value _does_ yield real world benefit later.
Since we lack the resources to fund every PhD with a crazy theory on what the next new subfield ought to be, how do we decide?
Seems like AI could help massively there, by removing a huge bottleneck around technical elaboration and application seeking.