joeshoe

Not a very philosophical question, but it's very abstract.

What do you think is more important, theory or application? Is it more relevant to understand how the universe really works, or how to make use of our environment for a practical purpose?

zen_tom

You can't do one without the other.

CSflim

Well you can have theory without application, but obviously not vice-versa

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zen_tom

It would be very difficult to advance our understanding of say, sub-atomic physics without the application of a huge particle accelerator.

The two things go hand in hand, to properly understand something, you have to have applied it. And to apply something, you have to have an initial thoretical idea of it.

Zeraph

We need both. We need applied for the present and theory for the future.

roadkill

We need more however i feel that theory is a bit better off you can change theorys in the makeing/works appling something thats wrong you can't change.

flstf

For our immediate survival, application is probably more important. Even if we don't understand exactly why it happens it is important that we know how to grow food for instance. Of couse it would be helpful to know why but not absolutely necessary.

For our long term survival we probably need to know a great deal about why and how things work (theory). If we are not to become extinct like almost all other life forms on this planet, we better understand some things.

d*d

application proves the theory- they are two parts of one process not two separate entities

zen_tom

yes d*d, that's exactly it - they are the two sides of the same coin.

d*d

it's not often we agree zen_tom, I see you are now the possessor of a shiny new avatar

zen_tom

yup, crossed the threshold yesterday sometime - I normally view tfp with images/avatars switched off, I'm allowing myself a vanity week here though!

zen_tom

In the early days of the steam engine, they believed that a thing called phlogiston, not steam, was the source of the new-found power. And despite an innacurate model of the world were able to apply their theory and kick-start the industrial revolution.

1010011010

The best test of a theory is to trying to build something the theory says should function some specific way and see if it works. OTOH, you can just tinker and by trial and error find working solutions, without having any theoretical basis for how or why things work.

Ancient architecture, for example, came to be structurally sound simple because unsound buildings tended to fall down after a while. So when the current batch of fresh new builders looked at existing structures for ideas or instruction, they automatically saw mostly designs that worked, simply because those were the only ones that were around. Stretch it across the centuries and you get a pretty developed set of rules for designing safe practical structures without any of the theoretical underpinnings of modern engineering.

Yet, with theoretical understanding of engineering, we can evaluate the soundness of a design BEFORE we build it... and try less practical designs with less risk.

So, theory lets you skip steps that would be required in a plain train-and-error application-only style design process... but application ultimately tells you if you skipped too many or the wrong steps.

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Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions

joeshoe

Yeah, you guys are right, theory and application are inextricably intertwined, although 1010011010 concept of application without theory is also a good way to look at each one separately, if you had to.

archpaladin

I agree that theory and appication are interconnected and aren't very seperable. However, in a "what's more important" sense, I would go with application. Knowing something but having no use for it in the practical world isn't helpful to society at all (until a use is found for that knowledge). Also, people can be easily trained to learn a technique, process, or trade without really knowing the theory behind it, and be good enough to use it for the benefit of others. Of course, repeated application leads to theoretical understanding, but that brings me around to my first point.

cybersharp

Well the I think that the better you know theory the better you will be able to apply it to a practical use.

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0PtIcAl

John Henry

"Theory without Practice is sterile, and Practice without Theory is futile" Can't find it credited anywhere, but I think it was Karl Marx.

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"No one was behaving from very Buddhist motives. Then, thought Pigsy, he was hardly a Buddha, nor was he a monkey. Presently, he was a pig spirit changed into a little girl pretending to be a little boy to be offered to a water monster. It was all very simple to a pig spirit."

fckm

Theory and Application are interwined, and of course, it is possible to do one without the other. But, you can't do much. The Chinese had their moldy oranges, and the europeans had their steam engines, but if it wasn't for the study of physics and biology, I don't think we'd see today's billion dollar pharmacuetical and automotive industries.

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And if you say to me tomorrow, oh what fun it all would be.
Then what's to stop us, pretty baby. But What Is And What Should Never Be.

zen_tom

I've never heard this before, what did they do with their mouldy oranges?