> For example, Newtonian physics always had the goal of calculating artillery trajectories.
Excuse me? Principia Mathematica' real purpose is to compute artillery trajectories? Sorry, this claim is absurd and the burden of evidence just shifted to you.
> Nuclear physics had the goals of energy/weapons.
That's entirely false. What we now call nuclear physics originated in particle physics. Weapon research is a recent spinoff of this field, and is not a source of new insights into nature.
When Leo Szilard realized that a chain reaction was possible, he wasn't trying to solve a practical problem, he was simply brainstorming a pure-research idea (and it is said, while waiting to cross a street).
When Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn discovered nuclear fission, they were engaged in pure research, they were not trying to solve any specific problem.
The Manhattan Project and all that followed from it were applied-research spinoffs of basic breakthroughs in pure research.
> But there are also a huge number of anecdotes of pure research being directly motivated by providing theoretical justification for/analysis of applied work.
Your claim is self-contradicting. If the goal of a research program is the solution of a practical problem, then it's not pure research.
> So I don't see any compelling reason to believe your unsupported assertions.
I don't have unsupported assertions, instead the history of science has copious examples in support of the idea that most of our insight into nature arises in pure research.
Excuse me? Principia Mathematica' real purpose is to compute artillery trajectories? Sorry, this claim is absurd and the burden of evidence just shifted to you.
> Nuclear physics had the goals of energy/weapons.
That's entirely false. What we now call nuclear physics originated in particle physics. Weapon research is a recent spinoff of this field, and is not a source of new insights into nature.
When Leo Szilard realized that a chain reaction was possible, he wasn't trying to solve a practical problem, he was simply brainstorming a pure-research idea (and it is said, while waiting to cross a street).
When Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn discovered nuclear fission, they were engaged in pure research, they were not trying to solve any specific problem.
The Manhattan Project and all that followed from it were applied-research spinoffs of basic breakthroughs in pure research.
> But there are also a huge number of anecdotes of pure research being directly motivated by providing theoretical justification for/analysis of applied work.
Your claim is self-contradicting. If the goal of a research program is the solution of a practical problem, then it's not pure research.
> So I don't see any compelling reason to believe your unsupported assertions.
I don't have unsupported assertions, instead the history of science has copious examples in support of the idea that most of our insight into nature arises in pure research.