Research pursued purely to satisfy curiosity, with no thought of application, has historically been the ultimate source of the most consequential practical technologies. The chain from discovery to use is often indirect and unforeseeable, so demanding immediate utility as a condition of funding would have strangled the very inquiries that later proved most useful.
James Clerk Maxwell worked out the mathematical theory of electromagnetism in the 1860s as abstract speculation, and Heinrich Hertz detected electromagnetic waves in the 1880s with no practical purpose in mind, calling them useless. Marconi's wireless telegraphy and all radio communication followed from this work neither man intended to apply.
Protected spaces like the Institute for Advanced Study should give scholars complete freedom and security with no fixed duties, teaching obligations, or demand for results. The deliberate removal of pressure to produce is itself the mechanism by which the most ambitious intellectual work becomes possible.
Evaluating research by whether it will yield a practical payoff misreads how discovery works, because the payoff is usually invisible at the moment of inquiry. The better test is whether a question genuinely engages a capable mind's curiosity, since intellectual interest, not foreseen application, predicts eventual significance.
Beyond its eventual material dividends, the pursuit of useless knowledge is justified as an expression of the human spirit's desire to understand, comparable to art and music. Flexner argues this intrinsic worth stands even in cases where no practical application ever arrives.