> It is a fact, confirmed by the history of science since Galileo and Newton, that the more theoretical and removed from immediate applications a scientific top

> It is a fact, confirmed by the history of science since Galileo and Newton, that the more theoretical and removed from immediate applications a scientific topic appears to be, the more likely it is to eventually find the most striking practical applications. Consider number theory, which only 20 years ago was believed to be the most useless chapter of mathematics and is today the core of computer security. Sounds like survivorship bias. Sure, there are plenty of examples of math concepts that ended up being extremely valuable but were once considered esoteric. What about the ones that remained esoteric? I understand this was just one point of the essay, so he couldn't dive too deep. Would be cool to see a fuller analysis.