Usefulness of a Theory
- Beautiful Mind (John Nash)
- When Nash came up with his "unifying principle" for Pigeon behaviour,
he didn't realise that it would be useful for Economics.
- A lot of Mathematical theories, and other theories are like this;
their value for practical applications is only found later.
- None the less, a theory that has no use, is, well, not useful.
- Theories with practical applications are more valuable than theories
with none.
- Similarly, some incorrect theories (say Newtonian Mechanics) have
scads of usefullness.
