Highlights from the book 'Surely you're joking Mr. Feynmann'

I don’t believe I can really do without teaching. The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don’t have any ideas and I’m not getting anywhere I can say to myself ‘At least I’m living: at least I’m doing something: I’m making some contribution’ - it’s just psychological.

(all these great minds at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton) have every opportunity to do something, and they’re not getting any ideas. I believe that in a situation like this a kid of guilt or depression worms inside of you, and you begin to worry about not getting any ideas. And nothing happens. Still no ideas come. Nothing happens because there’s not enough real activity and challenge: You’re not in contact with the experimental guys. You don’t have to think how to answer questions from the students. Nothing!

I had never wanted to take a taxi: I was always a young fella, short on money, wanting to be my own man. But I thought to myself, ‘I’m a professor - I must be dignified.’ So I took my suitcase down from my shoulder and carried it in my hand.

It wasn’t a failure on my part that the Institute for Advanced Study expected me to be that good; it was impossible. It was clearly a mistake, and the moment I appreciated the possibility that they might be wrong, I realized that it was also true of all the other places, including my own university. I am what I am, and if they expected me to be good and they’re offering me some money for it, it’s their hard luck.
He said, in a serious tone, “Feynman, you’re teaching your classes well; you’re doing a good job, and we’re very satisfied. Any other expectations we might have are a matter of luck. When we hire a professor, we’re taking all the risks. If it comes out good, all right. If it doesn’t, too bad. But you shouldn’t worry about what you’re doing or not doing.”

Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing – it didn’t have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. … So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I’ll never accomplish anything, I’ve got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read The Arabian Nights for pleasure, I’m going to play with physics whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.
He says, “Feynman, that’s pretty interesting, but what’s the importance of it? Why are you doing it?”. “Hah!” I say. “There’s no importance whatsoever. I’m just doing it for the fun of it.” His reaction didn’t discourage me; I had made up my mind I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked. I went on to work out equations of wobbles. Then I thought about how electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there’s the Dirac Equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. … Before I knew it (it was a very short time), I was playing – working, really – with the same old problem that I loved so much but had stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos: my thesis-type problems; all those old-fashioned, wonderful things. It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! … There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.

“OK,” he says. “The whole principle is this: The guy wants to be a gentleman. He doesn’t want to be thought of as impolite, crude, or especially a cheapskate. As long as the girl knows the guy’s motives so well, it’s easy to steer him in the direction she wants him to go. Therefore,” he continued, “under no circumstances be a gentleman! You must disrespect the girls.”

Defining science as an understanding of the behaviour of nature

And when I became interested in beta decay, directly, I read all these reports by the ‘beta-decay experts,’ which said it’s T. I never looked at the original data; I only read those reports, like a dope. Had I been a good physicist, when I thought of the original idea back at the Rochester Conference, I would have immediately looked up how strong we know it’s T. That would have been the sensible thing to do. I would have recognized right away that I had already noticed it wasn’t satisfactorily proved. Since then, I never pay any attention to anything by experts. I calculate everything myself. When people said the quark theory was pretty good, I got two Ph.D.s, Finn Ravndal and Mark Kislinger, to go through the whole works with me, just so I could check that the thing was really giving results that fit fairly well, and that it was a significantly good theory. I’ll never make that mistake again – reading the experts’ opinions. Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, learn what not to do, and that’s the end of you.

I noticed that the teacher didn’t tell people much (the only thing he told me was my picture was too small on the page). Instead, he tried to inspire us to experiment with new approaches. I thought of how we teach physics: we have so many techniques, so many mathematical methods, that we never stop telling the students how to do things. On the other hand, the drawing teacher is afraid to tell you anything.
If your lines are very heavy, the teacher can’t say, “Your lines are too heavy,” because some artist has figured out a way of making great pictures using heavy lines. The teacher doesn’t want to push you in some particular direction.
So the drawing teacher has this problem of communicating how to draw by osmosis and not by instruction, while the physics teacher has the problem of always teaching techniques rather than the spirit of how to go about solving physical problems.

I had thought that loosen meant to make sloppy drawings, but it really meant to relax and not worry about how the drawing is going to come out.

This was a terrific excitement to me – that I also could tell the difference between a beautiful work of art and one that’s not, without being able to define it. As a scientist, you always think you know what you’re doing, so you tend to distrust the artist who says, “It’s great,” or “It’s no good,” and then is not able to explain why, as Jerry did with those drawings I took to him. But here I was, sunk – I could do it too!

Other artists I talked to would say things that made no sense at first, but they would go to great lengths to explain their ideas to me. One time, I went somewhere as part of this scheme with Robert Irwin. It was a two-day trip, and after a great effort of discussing back and forth, I finally understood what he was trying to explain to me, and I thought it was quite interesting and wonderful.

So I stopped at random – and read the next sentence carefully. I can’t remember it precisely, but it was very close to this: “The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels.” I went back and forth over it and translated: You know what it means? People read.

It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty – a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid – not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results, and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked, to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given if you know them. You must do the best you can – if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong – to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it or put it out, then you must also include all the facts that disagree with it as well as those that agree with it.
There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that the things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory, but that the finished theory makes something else come out right in addition.
In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others judge the value of your contribution – not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

The easiest way to explain this idea is to contrast it, for example, with advertising. Last night I heard that Wesson oil doesn’t soak through food. Well, that’s true. It’s not dishonest; but the thing I’m talking about is not just a matter of not being dishonest – it’s a matter of scientific integrity, which is another level.
The fact that should be added to that advertising statement is that no oils soak through food if operated at a certain temperature. If operated at another temperature, they all will – including Wesson oil. So it’s the implication that has been conveyed, not the fact, which is true – and the difference is what we have to deal with.