A man of many words, and worlds
Nobel-winning physicist’s quotes collected in new book Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) was made for the movies. Handsome, unconventional, curious, he was described as having a sense of “magic” about science, and he had a passion for playing the bongos, drawing the human figure and learning languages, including Mayan hieroglyphics.
He combined scientific genius with regular-guy language: “I had this new equation for beta decay, which wasn’t as vital as the Dirac Equation, but it was good,” he wrote, sounding like somebody who had come up with a new recipe for meat loaf. “It’s the only time I ever discovered a new law.”
Now his daughter, Michelle Feynman, has edited a collection of quotes from his voluminous output of books, lectures, essays, articles and scientific papers. Some excerpts from The Quotable Feynman:
“Before and after are not absolute ideas; they depend on the point of view. It is similar to the question of what is in front and what is in back. If I turn a little bit, I can change the arrangement . . . This leads us to the idea of the representation of time as a fourth geometrical dimension.”
“We are so used to looking at the world from the point of view of living things that we cannot understand what it means not to be alive, and yet most of the time the world had nothing alive on it. And in most places in the universe today, there is probably nothing alive.”
About teaching: “Stay human and on your pupil’s side.”
“Science is only useful if it tells you about some experiment that has not been done. It is no good if it only tells you what just went on.”
“People think experts know what they are doing. But most experts, whether in the stock market, education, sociology or some parts of psychology, don’t know more than the average person. They do studies, follow certain methods and have results.”