Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.
Interpretation
Philosophy of science offers little practical benefit to scientists, similar to how birds do not need ornithology to fly.
In this quote, Richard P. Feynman humorously expresses the idea that the theoretical frameworks or philosophical discussions surrounding scientific practices may not be essential or practically useful for scientists in their day-to-day work. Instead, scientists often focus on empirical data and practical application rather than philosophical debates, just as birds do not rely on the study of their existence to navigate the skies.
In practice
In a lecture on the role of empiricism in science, this quote can emphasize the practical nature of scientific work.
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.
Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.
Light is the only connection we have with the Universe beyond our solar system, and the only connection our ancestors had with anything beyond Earth. Follow the light and we can journey from the confines of our planet to other worlds that orbit the Sun without ever dreaming of spacecraft. To look up is to look back in time, because the ancient beams of light are messengers from the Universe's distant past.
In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.
Scientists in different disciplines don't speak the same language. They publish in different journals. It's like the United Nations: You come together, but no one speaks the same language, so you need some translators.
It is hard to overstate how valuable it is to have all the incredible tools that are used for human disease to study plants.
Regardless of your sex, if you have elevated testosterone levels in your blood, you're more likely to think a face with a neutral expression is instead looking threatening.
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