A very great deal more truth can become known than can be proven.
Interpretation
Some truths are intuitive and can be accepted without proof, even if they remain unproven.
This quote by Richard P. Feynman emphasizes the idea that there exists a vast realm of knowledge and truths that we may come to understand through experience or intuition rather than through formal evidence or proof. Feynman's assertion reflects the complexity of understanding reality, suggesting that our grasp of truth is not strictly bound by what can be empirically demonstrated, and that intellectual inquiry may yield insights that transcend proven facts.
In practice
In a lecture on scientific inquiry, one might say, 'As Richard P. Feynman noted, a very great deal more truth can become known than can be proven.'
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.
On seeing the marsupials in Australia for the first time and comparing them to placental mammals: βAn unbeliever . . . might exclaim 'Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work'β
I can now state that I have succeeded in operating a motive device by means of [cosmic rays]. I will tell you in the most general way, the cosmic ray ionizes the air, setting free many charges - ions and electrons. These charges are captured in a condenser which is made to discharge through the circuit of the motor.
Statistics is the grammar of science.
One day I went up to my mom and I said, 'Mom, can I have permission to build a 2.3-million electron-volt atom smasher - a betatron - in the garage?' And my mom stared at me, and she said, 'Sure. Why not? And don't forget to take out the garbage.'
Not only is science corrosive to religion, but religion is corrosive to science. It teaches people to be satisfied with trivial non-explanations and blinds them to the wonderful real explanations that we have within our grasp.
Economists (and others) who are satisfied with nature-free equations develop a dangerous hubris about the potency of our species
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