Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain.
Interpretation
Pursuing science for immediate practical benefits often leads to disappointment.
Hermann Von Helmholtz implies that a genuine pursuit of scientific knowledge is not primarily motivated by immediate practical applications. Instead, true scientific inquiry may take time to yield tangible benefits, highlighting the importance of curiosity and a long-term perspective in the field of science.
In practice
This quote could be used in a science class to emphasize the intrinsic value of scientific inquiry beyond practical results.
The total quantity of all the forces capable of work in the whole universe remains eternal and unchanged throughout all their changes. All change in nature amounts to this, that force can change its form and locality, without its quantity being changed. The universe possesses, once for all, a store of force which is not altered by any change of phenomena, can neither be increased nor diminished, and which maintains any change which takes place on it.
Isolated facts and experiments have in themselves no value, however great their number may be. They only become valuable in a theoretical or practical point of view when they make us acquainted with the law of a series of uniformly recurring phenomena, or, it may be, only give a negative result showing an incompleteness in our knowledge of such a law, till then held to be perfect.
Black is real sensation, even if it is produced by entire absence of light. The sensation of black is distinctly different from the lack of all sensations.
The present situation in physics is as if we know chess, but we don't know one or two rules.
My complaint is that there are more books and news articles than there are primary scientific papers. I am probably the biggest critic of the hypesters, because it's dangerous when fields get overhyped.
Light is the only connection we have with the Universe beyond our solar system, and the only connection our ancestors had with anything beyond Earth. Follow the light and we can journey from the confines of our planet to other worlds that orbit the Sun without ever dreaming of spacecraft. To look up is to look back in time, because the ancient beams of light are messengers from the Universe's distant past.
The law of floatation was not discovered by contemplating the sinking of things, but by contemplating the floating of things which floated naturally, and then intelligently asking why they did so.
Subatomic particles do not exist but rather show 'tendencies to exist', and atomic events do not occur with certainty at definite times and in definite ways, but rather show 'tendencies to occur'.
An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid.
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