We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics.
Interpretation
Understanding fundamental physics requires observation and experience.
Richard P. Feynman's quote emphasizes that the complexities of fundamental physics are not immediately apparent to us. Instead, we must observe and engage with the world around us over time to grasp the underlying principles or 'rules' that govern how things work. This metaphorical viewpoint likens learning physics to watching a game without knowing the rules, highlighting the importance of experiential learning and curiosity.
In practice
In a science class discussing the nature of physics, this quote can inspire students to be observant and curious.
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.
Armstrong described the lunar surface as 'beautiful.' I thought to myself, 'It's not really beautiful. It's magnificent that we're here, but what a desolate place we are visiting.'
If the experience of science teaches anything, it's that the world is very strange and surprising. The many revolutions in science have certainly shown that.
The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality.
So if the worth of the arts were measured by the matter with which they deal, this art-which some call astronomy, others astrology, and many of the ancients the consummation of mathematics-would be by far the most outstanding. This art which is as it were the head of all the liberal arts and the one most worthy of a free man leans upon nearly all the other branches of mathe matics. Arithmetic, geometry, optics, geodesy, mechanics, and whatever others, all offer themselves in its service.
The slow rejection of the foreign skin grafts fascinated me. How could the host distinguish another person's skin from his own?
The world little knows how many of the thoughts and theories which have passed through the mind of a scientific investigator, have been crushed in silence and secrecy by his own severe criticism and adverse examination!
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