Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But … - Richard Feynman

Western civilization, it seems to me, stands by two great heritages. One is the scientific spirit of adventure — the adventure into the unknown, an unknown that must be recognized as unknown in order to be explored, the demand that the unanswerable mysteries of the universe remain unanswered, the attitude that all is uncertain. To summarize it: humility of the intellect.

You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit and if I can't figure it out, then I go on to something else, but I don't have to know an answer, I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is so far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten me.

[I]n the years we have developed enormous abilities in mathematics and it takes a long time to train the students, and so they're very highly educated in that, but if you ask them why. Now we go back to the Mayans... [W]hy the rule? ...They don't know. They don't understand... The more accurately they can do it... adds nothing to their understanding... The student who is able to make these calculations of Venus... Mars, the Sun, the eclipses and everything else is a super priest, doesn't know why, any better. And if you were to explain that it was nothing but counting days, you would be reduced to the truth... and to an honest statement that he doesn't understand it.