Did you hear about the professor who invented a complicated but finely-tuned machine in his garage? The contraption was years in the making. Finally one day an inquisitive neighbor persuaded the inventor to let him peek at it. There it was—an enormous apparatus with gears and belts and flywheels and electronic components with their flashing lights and digital readouts.
With a push of a button, the machine hummed into motion with seamless precision, all the moving parts operating together like a miniature galaxy. The neighbor was hypnotized by the synchronization of the parts, then he asked, “But what does it do?”
“What do you mean?” asked the professor.
“I mean, what does it do? What is it good for?”
“Oh,” said the scholar, “it doesn’t really do anything, but look how wonderfully it works.”
That’s a picture of much of today’s thinking. Scholars have elaborate theories, and we all have lots of opinions, but sometimes we never get around to application. We can accumulate information, explain ideas, and discuss data, but left unanswered is the question—so what?
