Richard Feynman: Objectivist Hero

How many of you have read Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman?

I recommend it extremely highly to everyone; I think Feynman (who won a Nobel prize in physics) was a wonderful, brilliant champion of science and of scientific thinking. He was one of the greatest role models for "rational epistemology."

And, reading about his life gives the same kind of emotional fuel that reading about Howard Roark does.

Does anyone agree?

Post 1

Saturday, December 6, 2003 - 8:25am

I agree wholeheartedly! I have now read his book three times, and also the sequel, entitled WHAT DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK? But the second book is not as good as the first.

The book is hilarious. The story about his encounter with the field of philosophy is alone worth the book's price.

Post 2

Saturday, December 6, 2003 - 12:48pm

You know, even though the sequel may not be as good as the first, it too is one of my favorite books of all time. The story of his involvement with the investigation of the Challenger explosion (Feynman is the one who figured out why the space shuttle Challenger exploded) is a great lesson in scientific thinking--and a great warning about how non-scientific thinking can start to infect even an organization like Nasa. To see Feynman trying to work with the other investigators on the Challenger disaster, was like seeing Dagny Taggart trying to run Taggart Transcontinental--except for rare and invaluable exceptions, she is the only one who has any energy, any initiative, any spark.

Also, in What Do You Care What Other People Think?, some of the details of Feynman's romance with Arlene, the love of his life, are very touching. It sounds like the plot of a great novel--a brilliant scientist, faced with the problem that his wife is suffering from some unknown illness. A man completely devoted to honesty, pressured by the family of the woman he loves not to tell her that she is going to die.

Even the title of the sequel--What Do You Care What Other People Think?--shows what an individualist Feynman was.

Are these books popular among Objectivists? Because if they are not--I really, really think they should be. Next time you're in a bookstore--anyone who's reading this--check out the first few pages of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, and see if you don't think it's something an Objectivist would love.

(Early in Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, he tells stories of how, as a child growing up in the depression, he fixed radios for some extra money. One of his customers complained that Feynman, who was about ten, I think, was just sitting there looking at the radio, not doing anything. But Feynman insisted, "I'm *thinking*." And when Feynman figured out how to fix the radio, the astonished man exclaimed, "HE FIXES RADIOS BY THINKING!")

Post 3

Saturday, December 6, 2003 - 2:17pm

Oh, yes. In fact, one of the major reasons the second book is not quite as good as the first is merely because it is not as long!

The first book, SURELY YOU'RE JOKING, MR. FEYNMAN! was actually mentioned by Mr. Robert Tracinski in THE INTELLECTUAL ACTIVIST. It sounded like he was a fan of it also.

The book is supercharged with humor and trenchant individualism. It is one of the very few works that I reread with the same mania as I bring to Ayn Rand's novels. It is totally of "my world."

Post 4

Saturday, December 6, 2003 - 2:50pm

Here's another interesting fact--when Ayn Rand was planning to write a movie about the making of the atomic bomb, she did research about the scientists at Los Alamos--and there is a note in her journals about Feynman, and how he would play his bongo drums while he was thinking.

Post 5

Sunday, December 7, 2003 - 1:36am

"We cannot define anything precisely! If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit opposite each other, one saying to the other, 'You don't know what you are talking about!' The second one says 'What do you mean by know? What do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you?', and so on."

"I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something."

- Richard Feynman

Post 6

Sunday, December 7, 2003 - 11:13am

Not to change the subject, but another good read is Isaac Asimov's life story in two volumes: IN MEMORY YET GREEN and IN JOY STILL FELT.

My enjoyment was significantly lowered by his occasional comments on social and political issues, but as a story of an individualistic rationalist confronting groupthink and ignorance it is a solid, entertaining reading experience. Like Feynman's book, it is often very funny, though less often.

But Feynman's book wins hands down in any contest with the Asimov tomes on any level, I have to add.

Post 7

Sunday, December 7, 2003 - 5:51pm

Asimov has some books on the history of physics that are very good. A good foundation for someone who is really trying to learn physics, because it shows how all the ideas were developed from scratch, what experiments were done in what order, etc.

Post 8

Friday, December 12, 2003 - 9:31pm

here's a nice article on Feynman http://www.mises.org/fullarticle.asp?control=505&id=63
from a person of libertarian persuasion.

Richard Feynman has been someone I've admired since first reading his books several years ago (perhaps even before reading Rand). I certainly thing rational minds will reach similar conclusions of the nature of things, even if they never come in contact.

and his layman oriented books on physics are really well done and present the material in a very logical fashion while not falling into the traps that make many other books for the lay person so useless.

which also reminds me, does anyone have any thoughts on why a book like Hawking's "a brief history of time" seems to convey such a malevolent worldview on the part of the author?
I read his book several years ago, probably about the same time I read Feynman's book, and something about it just felt so negative I could hardly finish it. Also it made me hope that someday someone will thoroughly discredit the big bang theory and all the silly theoretical bullshit with dark matter and such. Some day I hope that people won't think of him as the 2nd most important scientist of the 20th century. (whatever else you can say about Einstein, at least his lay writings on science were lucid and unpretentious). Part of my problem arose from his seeming disdain for empirical evidence.

I was young at the time. So I didn't identify the reasons behind my feeling, beyond a general dislike of being talked down to. Has anyone else read "a brief history of time", and perhaps identified why Hawking seems so evil?

Post 9

Saturday, December 13, 2003 - 5:38pm

I've always thought of Hawking as a hero, because I've always considered him to be a great scientist, and devoted to reason. But maybe if I re-read some of his stuff now that I'm more acquainted with Objectivism, I'd find more to worry about.

I do think that, like David Harriman at ARI says, a lot of modern physics is starting to sound like pseudo-science; for example, a recent edition of Scientific American, on the front cover, stated that "Infinite Earths in parallel universes really exist." I have the impression that theoretical physicists are in a difficult place where their problems are very challenging, and it is hard to come up with experiments to test their theories--and the big worry is that they'll start to forget about the necessity of testing their theories with experiments, or something like that. Maybe Hawking doesn't seem skeptical enough about all these abstract, strange ideas that aren't very well tested yet.

Two things in particular scare me about modern physics--first, physicists have noticed that the laws of physics usually seem to be in some sense "beautiful", or "elegant", or something--and they use this sense of beauty or elegance to guide them when they're trying to discover new laws of physics. Well, I believe that's useful, but I'm afraid that physicists could start to trust this feeling of beauty too much, to the point of disregarding experimental evidence, or not searching hard enough for experimental confirmation of their theories.

There's a story about Einstein--when he got the letter that contained the results of an experimental test of his theory of relativity, supposedly he didn't even open it; and supposedly (I think the story goes) he said something like, "if my theory were wrong, then God would have made a mistake." I think that's a very unscientific thing for someone to say. He should have said, "regardless of how beautiful my equations are, it is still crucial to test them carefully with experiments to see if they are actually true."

The other thing that worries me, is that a lot of physics students are drawn to physics because they are fascinated by how *strange* it is--and I'm afraid that when they grow up, and become researchers, they'll be eager to come up with the *strangest* theories they can possibly imagine; I'm afraid their love of strangeness could pull them away from a disciplined search for the truth.

Post 10

Saturday, December 13, 2003 - 5:47pm

Hey, I just read the article you linked to; that was really great!

Post 11

Sunday, December 14, 2003 - 11:06am

John, the source of that feeling of malevolence you got from reading Stephen Hawking's book probably came from the fact that the author seemed to be undermining philosophical fundamentals (I haven't read the book, so I'm speculating). I have read versions of the big bang theory that do exactly that.

Your hope that someone will discredit such theories in the future is hopeless -- any refutation must proceed on the basis of reason, which presupposes the truth of identity, causality, logic, and the evidence of the senses. If a theory contradicts a basic truth, it discredits itself by that very fact -- and no other fact could do the job.

Albert Einstein himself expressed strong reservations about certain aspects of quantum physics. If he could not discredit them with his vast scientific knowledge, no one can.

As a criterion of truth, beauty should not be used at all -- only reason. Beauty is merely an effect that can arise when a theory explains a lot and pulls a lot together. But, depending on the perceiver, beauty might also be seen in symmetry and simplicity, two things that have no necessary relationship to truth. Come to think of it, they often seem to have an inverse relationship to it.

What scares me is new researchers who need discipline not to stray from an honest search for the truth. People drawn to science for any other reason than a passion for understanding -- who have any other motives at root -- do not belong in the company of men such as Richard Feynman.

Rodney Rawlings

Post 12

Sunday, December 14, 2003 - 1:56pm