memes

All of the most-impactful minds in science were mocked by their contemporaries.

Think about it.

I expect Feynman’s answer, if he had a whiteboard and unlimited time, would’ve been to dive into Maxwell’s equations.

With that in mind, his answer makes complete sense. Good luck explaining coupled PDEs to people who aren’t mathy in a few sentences without visual aid. The analogy to the gravitational force isn’t on point; there’s a lot more to be said about how magnets tie to into E&M more broadly, compared to gravity.

Though you’re absolutely right that once you get deep enough into any topic in physics that the answer to “why?” inevitably becomes “it just be like that”.

https://xkcd.com/1489

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Title-Text: "Of these four forces, there's one we don't really understand." "Is it the weak force or the strong--" "It's gravity."

I think OP's meme illustrates Feynman's point very well; there comes a stage where if the number of incorrect statements in your explanation outnumber the the correct ones, it's no longer a meaningful explanation.

Here's the video.

It's been a while since I watched it, so judge for yourself.

To me, there's two ways you could interpret that, one is what are the effects of magnetism which we learn on high school physics, the other other is why does magnetism have those effects which is more something you'd learn in an undergraduate physics or chemistry degree.