> Detaching any science (or other knowledge-gathering-activity) from reality may well turn it into teology :/
The problem I have with that argument is how historically unsupported it is. Some of the most abstract branches of mathematics, completely devoid of any real world connection, have become insanely useful later on.
Nobody thought that number theory had any value before cryptography showed that it did.
And it was Hilbert's push to put mathematics on an abstract and axiomatic foundation that led the way to discovering what "computation" is (and what its limits are) and therefore to the birth of computer science.
The problem I have with that argument is how historically unsupported it is. Some of the most abstract branches of mathematics, completely devoid of any real world connection, have become insanely useful later on.
Nobody thought that number theory had any value before cryptography showed that it did.
And it was Hilbert's push to put mathematics on an abstract and axiomatic foundation that led the way to discovering what "computation" is (and what its limits are) and therefore to the birth of computer science.