<p>I create sounds when I fart and burp, why don’t they have any intrinsic value?</p>
<p>Have you ever written a mathematical proof? The whole concept of elegance is done purely for creativity and nothing else. Trust me on this, a beautiful mathematical proof is a sight to behold. Does that make pure mathematics a useful/practical thing? Doubt it. </p>
<p>You could also look at various mathematicians and how the time affected their works. For example, in early works, you’ll find that they didn’t use negative numbers as many felt they didn’t “exist”. This is partly why when the cubic was solved by Cardano, it was only considering positive coefficient and why people freaked out over the solutions. Once again, does that make studying math history any useful/practical? </p>
<p>I can make really really pretty pictures with fractals based on patterns from nature. </p>
<p>I think if you’ve seriously done any real (pure) mathematics, you’ll see all these things are very similar. That doesn’t say anything about it’s practicality/usefulness or why anyone should do it. Just because you view something one way doesn’t mean anyone else shares the view or should share the view.</p>
<p>I’ll restate B@rium’s question in my own way: Why do any of those thing have any “intrinsic” value when the sciences and math somehow don’t? The same way I showed how all your points could be done with just mathematics, it can be done with the sciences. I’ve at least seen it done with Chemistry.</p>