Pure Understanding of Nature is the Primary Aim of Science

Pupin believed with passionate intensity that the primary aim of science is the pure understanding of nature, and that useful applications must be considered of secondary importance. The prestige and influence which he derived from his inventions he used in an unceasing campaign to improve the standing of fundamental science in America. In this way the paradoxical situation arose, that it was Pupin the practical inventor who did more than any other man of his time to convince the American public that great scientific discoveries are more important than inventions. Pupin's triumph has been so complete that now, twenty-five years after his death, pure scientists have more prestige, more influence and more financial support than he would have imagined possible. Perhaps, in this apotheosis of the fundamental researcher, {139} some injustice has been done to the class of inventors to which Pupin himself belonged. We have reached the point where a first-rate inventor is rarer than a first-rate scientist. Inventors are no longer welcomed in most university departments, and even in industrial laboratories pure research is becoming more and more the fashionable thing to do. Perhaps the time will soon come when a group of pure scientists will be compelled to organize a campaign to prevent the permanent extinction of the inventor.

From the preface.