I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain … In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.
Interpretation
Embracing uncertainty can lead to greater opportunities and insights than clinging to potentially incorrect answers.
In this quote, Richard P. Feynman expresses the idea that doubt and uncertainty are not hindrances but rather essential components of intellectual exploration and progress. He argues that instead of seeking definitive answers that may not be accurate, one should embrace the unknown, as it opens the door to new possibilities and deeper understanding. Feynman highlights the importance of remaining curious and flexible in our thinking, suggesting that a degree of uncertainty is vital for creativity and advancement in knowledge.
In practice
In a lecture about the importance of scientific inquiry, one might quote Feynman to illustrate the value of uncertainty.
The philosophical question before us is, when we make an observation of our track in the past, does the result of our observation become real in the same sense that the final state would be defined if an outside observer were to make the observation?
We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
It has not yet become obvious to me that there's no real problem. I cannot define the real problem; therefore, I suspect there's no real problem, but I'm not sure there's no real problem.
For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
Science is a way to teach how something gets to be known, what is not known, to what extent things are known (for nothing is known absolutely), how to handle doubt and uncertainty, what the rules of evidence are, how to think about things so that judgments can be made, how to distinguish truth from fraud, and from show.
The Church is like a great ship being pounded by the waves of life's different stresses. Our duty is not to abandon ship, but to keep her on her course.
Police departments are always a reflection of the society that they serve. Is there such a thing as 'police culture?' Absolutely. Is that culture isolated form the surrounding society? Absolutely not.
My experience is listen, see, feel - and then think about what you change.
In America, mixed-race identity tends to invite both curiosity and suspicion, largely because few have found a way to interrogate it without centering whiteness as the scale by which to evaluate blackness.
This thing called nationalism is a treasure that a country uses to try to develop and a nationality uses to try to survive. China has lost this treasure.
Every word and every deed, every thought and every gesture, even the simple act of paying attention can be a gift and therefore an echo of God’s life in us.
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