The Pleasure Was All Mine, Mr. Feynman
Written: Dec 12 '02 (Updated Aug 26 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: The thoughts of Richard Feynman
Cons: None
The Bottom Line: The pleasure really is in finding things out.
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| Hypotenuse's Full Review: |
I remember my first rock.
Not the first rock with which I’d ever made contact. As a child I’d spent many an hour skipping stones, trying for that perfect throw; playing hopscotch, reaching for a rock on that number ten square; and even time spent in the emergency room, screaming as they stitched up the gaping hole in my head from when Ernie Johnson threw his rock.
No, I’m speaking of the very first time I held a rock, and time stretched out before and behind me. Deep time has a way of broadening your outlook, spreading you so thin you become invisible as you contemplate its vastness. My rock wasn’t uniquely special. Actually, my rock was just an ordinary piece of sedimentary rock, shale to be specific. But that rock expanded my mind in ways I find hard to explain.
Richard Feynman didn’t have a rock. He had a red ball. His childhood epiphany occurred while watching this red ball seemingly start and stop as he pulled his wagon around the neighborhood. And so Feynman discovered for himself the principle of inertia, thus beginning the career of one of our most remarkable physicists.
To many, the name of Richard Feynman will be familiar through his work in the Challenger investigation. Maybe in passing you’ve heard his name as a Nobel Prize winner. Or perhaps you identify his name with the building of the atomic bomb and his work at Los Alamos. While Feynman was all of this, he was so much more. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a series of very short essays by Richard Feynman. Through these essays you will discover the depth and breadth of a man whose thoughts will surprise, delight, and cry out for serious reflection.
His thoughts on winning the Nobel Prize will definitely surprise many. “I don’t see that it makes any point that someone in the Swedish Academy decides that this work is noble enough to receive a prize – I’ve already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it – those are the real things, the honors are unreal to me.” Perhaps you find this an unexpected reaction, but it is the honest reaction of a man who loved playing the bongo drums almost as much as exploring the universe.
Feynman talks about his father. You'll find this is where he gained his attitude toward authority. “One of the things that my father taught me besides physics, whether it’s correct or not, was a disrespect for the respectable…” Speaking about the joy of learning physics from his dad, he then relates his sadness upon realizing he had surpassed that which his dad could teach him in that subject. But physics would not be the most important lesson his father passed on to Richard Feynman. In my opinion, that would be the idea that to name something is to internally limit the concept of that thing. The only thing ever to limit Richard Feynman was death itself.
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a work rich in such ideas, and a book I highly recommend. His words voice ideas I have long held, but could not articulate. In my childhood I had put a name to rock. Limiting my viewpoint until the day I held my rock, and my concept of the world exploded. I’m embarrassed to relate that I didn’t find my rock until I was almost thirty. It took me that long to gain the perspective Richard Feynman learned at his father’s knee.
“I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose…”
Because, Mr. Feynman, the pleasure is in finding things out.
Recommended:
Yes
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Hypotenuse
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