The Value Of Useless Knowledge

Happy New Year!

And what better way to start the new year than with a reminder of the value of useless knowledge?

If in retrospect we try to assess the influences, academic and personal, that shaped Erwin Panofsky’s mind, I think we must beware of seeing him as a man nurtured by the “great books” or by the works of the “great masters” only. On the contrary, it was the curriculum-shunned texts, often written in a language either intentionally obscure or outright abstruse, that he taught us to appreciate as true supports of our humanistic studies. “Who has read Hisperica famina?” he might ask members of his privatissimum. “Are you familiar with Lycophron’s Alexandra? Do you understand the significance of Virgilius Maro Grammaticus? Of Hiob Ludolph’s Assyrian studies? Of Kepler’s Somnium?” And when we shook our heads, he might add, “Gentlemen, you have yet to discover the value of useless knowledge.”

• William S. Heckscher, “Erwin Panofsky: A Curriculum Vitae,” Reprinted by the Department of Art and Archaeology from the Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, volume XXVIII, number 1, 1969, p. 8:

Since coming across Panofsky’s admonition, I’ve tried to keep it in mind, ironically finding it to be useful advice.

A German-born art historian, Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968), spent most of his academic career in the U.S. after the Nazis terminated his appointment at the University of Hamburg.  Joining the faculty at the new Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton he became friends with colleagues Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Pauli (who discovered the Pauli exclusion principle, which is different than the principle by which Paulie was excluded).

 
Panofsky’s most important work is reportedly Studies in Iconology: Humanist Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (1939). I have not read it.