A science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth, or more directly promotes the destruction of human life.
Interpretation
The quote critiques sciences that exacerbate social inequalities or harm humanity.
G. H. Hardy's quote highlights a critical perspective on scientific advancement, suggesting that true usefulness lies not only in the knowledge gained but also in the ethical implications of its application. When scientific development reinforces wealth disparities or contributes to human suffering, it raises important questions about the purpose and morality of scientific inquiry.
In practice
During a debate on technological advancements, one might quote Hardy to emphasize the ethical responsibilities of scientists.
A chess problem is genuine mathematics, but it is in some way "trivial" mathematics. However, ingenious and intricate, however original and surprising the moves, there is something essential lacking. Chess problems are unimportant. The best mathematics is serious as well as beautiful-"important" if you like, but the word is very ambiguous, and "serious" expresses what I mean much better.
Mathematics is not a contemplative but a creative subject; no one can draw much consolation from it when he has lost the power or the desire to create; and that is apt to happen to a mathematician rather soon. It is a pity, but in that case he does not matter a great deal anyhow, and it would be silly to bother about him.
Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.
It is hardly possible to maintain seriously that the evil done by science is not altogether outweighed by the good. For example, if ten million lives were lost in every war, the net effect of science would still have been to increase the average length of life.
Real mathematics must be justified as art if it can be justified at all.
If intellectual curiosity, professional pride, and ambition are the dominant incentives to research, then assuredly no one has a fairer chance of gratifying them than a mathematician.
Economics has never been a science - and it is even less now than a few years ago.
In some sense, gravity does not exist; what moves the planets and the stars is the distortion of space and time.
Science proceeds more by what it has learned to ignore than what it takes into account.
Human societies vary in lots of independent factors affecting their openness to innovation.
Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.
Wherever we look at the living biota … discontinuities are overwhelmingly frequent…The discontinuities are even more striking in the fossil record. New species usually appear in the fossil record suddenly, not connected with their ancestors by a series of intermediates.
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