When a scientist doesn't know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is in some doubt.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the varying states of knowledge and uncertainty in the scientific process.
Richard P. Feynman highlights the different levels of understanding and certainty that scientists experience in their work. He suggests that ignorance marks the starting point of inquiry, while having a hunch indicates a step towards potential discovery, and being fairly certain still leaves room for doubt, illustrating the inherent uncertainties in scientific exploration.
In practice
This quote could be used in a science class to explain the nature of scientific inquiry.
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.
Finally we shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe.
We went to the Moon as technicians; we returned as humanitarians.
Talk to people... everything good I've done has come from conversations with people. Science is a very social phenomenon.
A lot of scientists hate writing. Most scientists love being in the lab and doing the work and when the work is done, they are finished.
It is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible.
One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.
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