"Seeking New Laws"

This kind of game, of roughly guessing at family relations and so on, is illustrative of a kind of preliminary sparring which one does with nature, before really discovering some deep and fundamental law. Before you get the deeper discoveries, examples are very important in the previous history of science. For instance, Mendeleev's discovery of the... See more

If you can find any other view of the world which agrees over the entire range where things have already been observed, but disagrees somewhere else, you've made a great discovery. Even if it doesn't agree with nature. It's darn hard, it's almost impossible, but not quite impossible, to find another theory, which agrees with experiments over the en... See more

What we need is imagination. But imagination is a terrible straitjacket. We have to find a new view of the world that has to agree with everything that's known, but disagree in its predictions, some way. Otherwise it's not interesting. And in that disagreement, agree with nature.

we always try to guess the most likely explanation, keeping in the back of the mind the fact that if it doesn't work, then we must discuss the other possibilities.

The inexperienced and crackpots and people like that will make guesses that are simple, all right, but you can immediately see that they're wrong. That doesn't count. And others, the inexperienced students, make guesses that are very complicated. And it sort of looks like it's all right. But I know that's not true, because the truth always turns ou... See more

I must also point out to you that you cannot prove a vague theory wrong. If the guess that you make is poorly expressed and rather vague, and the method that you used for figuring out the consequences is rather vague, you're not sure, and you just say I think everything is because it's all due to moogles, and moogles do this and that, more or less.... See more

It's necessary to make science useful, although it's uncertain. It's only useful if it makes predictions. It's only useful if it tells you about some experiment that hasn't been done. It's no good if it just tells you what just went on. So it's necessary to extend the ideas beyond where they've been tested.

As soon as any real, definite idea is substituted, it becomes almost immediately apparent that it doesn't work.

We must, and we should, and we always do extend as far as we can beyond what we already know, those things, those ideas that we've already obtained. We extend the ideas beyond their range. Dangerous, yes, uncertain, yes. But the only way to make progress.