Try this. Go to your favorite search engine and type in, ‘eminently practical’. Mine gave me no direct hits, just one word or the other.
Then type in ‘immanently practical’. I got more hits for that exact quote than I could count. Now you may not find that dispositive but I do. Usage determines the meaning of words. ‘Eminent’ isn’t used the way Ayers used it; ‘immanent’ is.
I'd never heard of "immanent." I was thinking of "imminent," even though I misspelled it in my reply.
I get almost precisely the opposite results. In fact, a search for “immanently practical” instead showed results for “eminently practical,” assuming that was what I must have meant.
Hmmm...I just went to google and typed in "eminently practical" (in quotes and got about 644,000 direct hits..