The Works of Richard Feynman
That one person could have so many wonderfully crazy things happen to him in one life is sometimes hard to believe.
If I have just one regret about the two collections of short works by Richard Feynman - Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman! and The Pleasure of Finding Things Out - it is that I have not read them earlier. I will make sure that my kids will read these books early enough: discovering how Feynman looked at the world might permanently and positively change their own view on life.
Besides having accomplished the groundbreaking work in quantum electrodynamics and undertaken adventures in biology, besides being a wonderful teacher and mentor, Feynman took pleasure in so many seemingly weird and unrelated activities, such as safe-cracking, playing drums, learning Portuguese and Japanese, deciphering Maya hieroglyphics, drawing - and the list is far from over!
How was it all possible? I guess it was because of the way Feynman looked at the world: with curiosity, open mind, willingness to play and patiently experiment to understand how the world works, with irreverence to pretension and hypocrisy, delight to solve puzzles, and excitement in succeeding in things he was not supposed to succeed in.
These two books abound with amazing stories. Full of the joy of life, lightness of being, and mischief, they also raise profound questions of the place of science in modern society, on scientific integrity, ethics, the way we teach our kids and transmit the knowledge.
My 8 favorite quotes:
Knowing merely the name of something is the same as not knowing anything at all about it.
I couldn’t see how anyone could be educated by this self-propagating system in which people pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything.
I think we should teach wonders, and the purpose of knowledge is to appreciate wonders even more. And that the knowledge is just to put into the correct framework the wonder that nature is.
When questioned on his Nobel prize: I’ve already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding things out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use my work - those are real things. The honors are unreal to me. I do not believe in honors, it bothers me, honors are epaulets, honors are uniforms.
Applications aren’t the only thing in the world. It’s interesting to understand what the world is made of. It’s the same interest, the curiosity of man that makes him build telescopes. What is the use of discovering the age of the universe? Or what are these quasars that are exploding at long distances? What’s the use of all that astronomy? There isn’t any. Nonetheless, it’s interesting.
Science creates power through its knowledge, a power to do things: you are able to do things after you know something scientifically. But the science does not give instructions with its power as to how to do good against how to do evil.
I have just one wish for you - the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain integrity, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.
I don’t know anything, but I do know that everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough.