Yes, pure science (with no technological applications) is theoretically possible. But I doubt scientists like Einstein or Hawking would be so keen on investigating the "mind of God," as they put it, if the knowledge were completely useless. At a minimum, the knowledge would enable us to understand the universe we're in.

To speak of the "mind" of nature is already to anthropomorphize it. Those scientists were pantheists in Spinoza's sense, but in practice this meant they could resort to the ambiguous language of theism while intending the atheistic sense (since God would equal Nature), and that move only took the existential pressure off of them.

We explain more of the thrust of the history of civilizations by positing the unconscious disgust with nature's monstrousness. That's what motivates the flurry of technological endeavours. We're blotting out the wilderness and replacing it with mind-centered refuges for a reason. Pure science is relatively idle.