>>17
Considering you need to design experiments at least to confirm your academic musings, and such outcomes tend to be pragmatic in the larger sense, you should be a little more open to pragmatic approaches. The alternative is to confine yourself to academic musings that grow more and more outlandish and out of touch with the real world. That's the state that cosmological physics is in now; it's heavily influenced by mathematical methods which no experiment has yet been able to confirm. Anything that can't be experimentally confirmed is by definition WRONG, since you may as well just say
"Gilgamesh did it" in a big chalked box on the blackboard.
Much can be said for academic musings which push the envelope of Human knowledge. However, that knowledge must be put to the test. It's the base of science and no other method applies.