Up to now, as we have all observed together, it is in the most barbarous centuries that the most useful discoveries are made; it seems that the role of the most enlightened periods and of the most learned gatherings is to ponder over what ignorant persons have invented. We know nowadays, after the long disputes of Mr. Huyghens and M. Renaud, how to determine the most advantageous angle made by the rudder of a vessel with the keel; but Christopher Columbus had discovered America without even suspecting the existence of that angle. I certainly do not infer from this that we should confine ourselves to working in the dark; but it would be well that physicists and geometricians joined practice to theory as much as possible. Is it necessary that what does most honor to the human mind should often be that which is least useful?

—Voltaire, Philosophical Letters