Is this something really new? I've always thought that for any field of science, there are always those that research for the sake of understanding, and those t

Is this something really new? I've always thought that for any field of science, there are always those that research for the sake of understanding, and those that study/ research the field to be use as an abstraction for another, more practical field (as noted in http://xkcd.com/435/ http://xkcd.com/435/ ). Even back hundreds of years ago, Newton developed Calculus for physics, but Euler is studying maths for the sake of understanding.