The present situation in physics is as if we know chess, but we don't know one or two rules.
Interpretation
Feynman suggests that our understanding of physics is incomplete and lacks critical foundational knowledge.
In this quote, Richard P. Feynman compares the state of physics to a game of chess where players are unaware of some crucial rules, implying that while we have made significant progress in understanding the universe, there are still fundamental principles and laws that remain elusive or unknown. This analogy highlights the complexity of scientific inquiry and encourages continued exploration and learning in the field of physics.
In practice
In a lecture on the current challenges in physics, one could use this quote to emphasize the need for deeper research.
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.
We live in the hope and faith that, by the advance of molecular physics, we shall by-and-by be able to see our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the properties of water, as we are now able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its parts and the manner in which they are put together.
Other intelligent life-forms will differ greatly in appearance - they may resemble the creature in E.T. or startle us with their beauty - but life itself is common, I'm certain.
Perception plays a vital role in the diagnosis of bipolar illness. Symptoms are perceived through the categories of psychiatric medicine at a given moment in history, categories which are continually shifting and being named or renamed.
I was born on January 8, 1942, exactly three hundred years after the death of Galileo. I estimate, however, that about two hundred thousand other babies were also born that day. I don't know whether any of them was later interested in astronomy.
At the core of 'Star Trek' is Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future. So much of science-fiction is about a dystopian society with human civilization having crumbled. He had an affirmative, shining, positive view of the future.
A lot of the things you see in science fiction revolve around black holes because black holes are strong enough to rip the fabric of space and time.
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