Enigma Solution

“The real enemy is the man who tries to mold the human spirit so that it will not dare to spread its wings.” In an age obsessed with practicality, productivity, and efficiency, I frequently worry that we are leaving little room for abstract knowledge and for the kind of curiosity that invites just enough serendipity to allow for the discovery of ideas we didn’t know we were interested in until we are, ideas that we may later transform into new combinations with applications both practical and metaphysical. This concern, it turns out, is hardly new. In ' The usefulness of Useless Knowledge' , originally published in the October 1939 issue of  Harper’s , American educator  Abraham Flexner  explores this dangerous tendency to forgo  pure curiosity in favor of pragmatism  — in science, in education, and in human thought at large — to deliver a poignant critique of the motives encouraged in young minds, contrasting those with the drivers that motivated so...