I don't just mean the nature of the universe - in all likelyhood, we will come up with a "theory of everything" even before we hit type II. But a theory of everything doesn't tell use about other planets with life on them, etc. As long as we are still exploring, we are still learning.
And truthfully, all you need to achieve a really high velocity is a huge electromagnetic mass driver. We don't currently have the capability to build one, much less power it, but the calculations of how much energy it would take to accelerate (say) a 5,000 tonne spacecraft to 99% of the speed of light are pretty trivial. Although in all honesty, who really wants to use such an old-fasioned method of travel? With a constant 1 G acceleration, you would have to accelerate for YEARS to get anywhere near the speed of light, which is kind of funny, because at a high enough velocity, you can cover tens of light-years in days or even hours. I would be much happier to just use quantum teleportation/ warp drive/ wormholes/ whatever. It's faster. As far as these go, you are probably right about having to know pretty much everything in order to build something that purposely messes around with the fabric of space-time. Especially if you want it to be safe (I've heard that current teleportation methods for particles can teleport with about 75% accuracy, which is obviously no good).
But one thing is for sure: the next few centuries are going to be one hell of a ride.
Shallow Hal