Feynman was also a very strong critic of purely theoretical physics. See, e.g., his criticism of string theory:
"I don't like that they're not calculating anything. I don't like that they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation—a fix-up to say, 'Well, it still might be true.'"
Feynman himself was a theorist, but the domain he worked on, mostly quantum electrodynamics, made very specific numerical predictions which were possible to test.
The problem (or maybe feature) of theory is that it can be accurate to the model but also wrong. It is the constant unwinding of accepted physics that helps us progress.
Comments
Feynman was also a very strong critic of purely theoretical physics. See, e.g., his criticism of string theory:
"I don't like that they're not calculating anything. I don't like that they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation—a fix-up to say, 'Well, it still might be true.'"
Feynman himself was a theorist, but the domain he worked on, mostly quantum electrodynamics, made very specific numerical predictions which were possible to test.
The problem (or maybe feature) of theory is that it can be accurate to the model but also wrong. It is the constant unwinding of accepted physics that helps us progress.