What is Science?!

I came across an interesting talk given by Richard Feynman at the fifteenth annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association, 1966 in New York City. He elaborates on the importance of scientific observation, the essence of science, and what distinguishes a brilliant scientist.

Here I quote a piece of conversation between him and his father who happened to be his mentor though he was a businessman not a scientist, after his graduation in Physics from MIT and Princeton,

I came home, and he said, "Now you've got a science education. I have always wanted to know something that I have never understood, and so, my son, I want you to explain it to me."

I said yes.

He said, "I understand that they say that light is emitted from an atom when it goes from one state to another, from an excited state to a state of lower energy.

I said, "That's right."

"And light is a kind of particle, a photon, I think they call it."

"Yes."

"So if the photon comes out of the atom when it goes from the excited to the lower state, the photon must have been in the atom in the excited state."

I said, "Well, no."

He said, "Well, how do you look at it so you can think of a particle photon coming out without it having been in there in the excited state?"

I thought a few minutes, and I said, "I'm sorry; I don't know. I can't explain it to you."

He was very disappointed after all these years and years of trying to teach me something, that it came out with such poor results.

I think it has a remarkable message: you should be able, by puting in plain words, to simply and intuitively give explanation to the scientific fact which you think you have learned perfectly!

Here is his talk, "What is Science?".