I’ve never been entirely certain that educating a person who as a probable consequence then goes on to conquer the known world (of their time) is necessarily a good thing. Of course, we can never be certain what someone will do with the technical knowledge or practical wisdom we might be fortunate enough in all our peripatetic wandering and philosophical musing to be able to bestow upon them.
The question as to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake resonates strongly here. We seek to know, to explain and to curate the knowledge we contribute to the world but it is not always possible to predict the consequences of our efforts. Einstein expressed an opinion that he wished he might instead have become a watchmaker when the horrors of the atom bomb became real but we can be fairly certain that if it was not him, someone else would have eventually discovered the energy/mass equivalence and led humanity down a similarly harrowing path.
Perhaps this points us as curious minds to consider in our everyday striving to understand happiness, to live essentially good lives and not to make too much of a mess of the various Gordian Knots we ourselves must disentangle, that some things, some consequences, always remain beyond our control.
Daedelus Kite 