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.
Before I lost my voice, it was slurred, so only those close to me could understand, but with the computer voice, I found I could give popular lectures. I enjoy communicating science. It is important that the public understands basic science, if they are not to leave vital decisions to others.
All of a sudden, space isn't friendly. All of a sudden, it's a place where people can die. . . . Many more people are going to die. But we can't explore space if the requirement is that there be no casualties; we can't do anything if the requirement is that there be no casualties.
In the Middle East, where populations are growing fast, the world is seeing the first collision between population growth and water supply at the regional level. For the first time in history, grain production is dropping in a geographic region with nothing in sight to arrest the decline. Each day now brings 10,000 more people to feed and less irrigation water with which to feed them.
Research can only present data about the past. No one seriously believes that people's answers to hypothetical questions about the future accurately represent their future behaviour; they merely represent a current attitude, which may or may not be translated into future behaviour.
More stars in the north are seen not to set, while in the south certain stars are no longer seen to rise.
True science discovers God in an ever-increasing degree β as though God were waiting behind every door opened by science.
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