Imagine you are invited to watch a chess game... you have never before seen a chess game, and know nothing about the rules or goals of the game. You sit and watch the players, but cannot ask any questions- all you can do is watch.

You have only two things you can do- you can sit there bored watching the players move the pieces, or you can try to find the order in the game- the rules by which the game operates.

At first you pick up the simple things- the pawns are more numerous than any other pieces- they can only move one space at a time. You notice that other pieces seem only able to behave in ways unique to them...

You oserve two opposing pawns aprroach eachother, one takes the other... AHA! when two oppositely colored pawns confront eachother in adjascent squares they exhibit new behavior! You keep watching, now with renewed hope that you may learn the rules after all! You see the bishop can only move on the diagonals... that horsey shaped piece can move in the shape of an 'L'...

Part of the game seems to involve attrition of your opponenets pieces, taking them when your piece can move to the other pieces square.... yet there seems to be some higher rules at work... the players often DONT take pieces that they could legally take. So you try to figure out what the REAL point of the game is, what is the real objective. What is the grand logic guiding the movements of the pieces?

You start to feel comfortable that you know the rules guiding the behavior of the pieces, you even can start predicting how they will move in various situations... Then one player castles his king...

This move is new and the first time you have seen it- one side moves two pieces at once in the castling move... this is new and worth study, you evaluate the moves you have seen before. You remember that the players seem to spend a lot of effort to corner the opposing 'king' with their pieces, and that they have in the past sacrificed pieces to protect the king...

You have an AHA! moment and realize that maybe the king is the object of the game...

We are watching and studying a game with FAR more pieces than chess, and rules much more convoluted. After watching a few days of chess games you might learn the rules, but you will still be a novice... Right now humanity has figured out how a lot of the pieces move, we know some of the rules. It will be a long time before we master the game, but at least we studying its rules and not just sitting there bored...

My belief is that the rules are finite and knowable, but so complex as to offer limitless opportunities for study. We have only been seriously studying the game for a few thousand years, maybe in a few hundred more we will be able to play the game with confidence.