The Universe Has Built Telescopes

Each telescope, whether it's on earth or in space, is designed to do a particular kind of science. You can build a telescope, that's one thing, but it'll probably be lacking in something else. When scientists are thinking about constructing these future telescopes and weighing them against the current benefit of the hubble or the web? Are any of them asking the question of, like, why? Is it just like a self evident question that we would want to understand more and see further and build better telescopes? Or is it just sort of like trying to accumulate more knowledge for knowledg's sake? Just trying to understand who we are and where we came from?