More Feynman

Richard Feynman: Rules of chess, rules of nature.

A bit more about the theory of science, from the bongo-playing, lock-picking, Nobel laureate, atomic-bomb developer, and all-around cool guy:

About two and a half.

One way, that's kind of a fun analogy, to try to get some idea of what we're doing in trying to understand nature, is to imagine that the gods are playing some great game, like chess, let's say. A chess game.

And you don't know the rules of the game, but you're allowed to look at the board, at least from time to time, and at a little corner, perhaps.

And from these observations, you try to figure out what the rules are, of the game.

What the rules are of the pieces moving. You might discover, after a bit, for example, when there's only one Bishop around on the board, you might notice that the Bishop maintains it's color.

Later on you might discover that the law for the Bishop is that it moves on a diagonal, which would explain, the law that you understood before, that the Bishop maintains it's color.

That would be analogous to when we discover one law, and then later find a deeper understanding of it.