The Pleasure of Finding Things Out - Richard Feynman

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Recently I was present at a lecture at Harvard University’s venerable Jefferson Lab. The speaker was Dr. Lene Hau of the Rowland Institute, who had just conducted an experiment that was reported not only in the distinguished scientific journal Nature but also on the front page of the New York Times. In the experiment, she (with her research group of students and scientists) passed a laser beam through a new kind of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate (a weird quantum state in which a bunch of atoms, cooled almost to absolute zero, practically stop moving at all and together act like a single particle), which slowed that light beam to the unbelievably leisurely pace of 38 miles per hour. Now light, which normally travels at the breakneck pace of 186,000 miles per second, or 669,600,000 miles per hour, in a vacuum, does typically slow down whenever it passes through any medium, such as air or glass, but only by a fraction of a percent of its speed in vacuo. But do the arithmetic and you will see that 38 miles per hour divided by 669.6 million miles per hour equals 0.00000006, or six-millionths of a percent, of its speed in vacuo. To put this result in perspective, it is as if Galileo had dropped his cannonballs from the Tower of Pisa and they took two years to reach the ground.

I was left breathless by the lecture (even Einstein would have been impressed, I think). For the first time in my life I felt a smidgen of what Richard Feynman called “the kick in the discovery,” the sudden feeling (probably akin to an epiphany, albeit in this case a vicarious one) that I had grasped a wonderful new idea, that there was something new in the world; that I was present at a momentous scientific event, no less dramatic or exciting than Newton’s feeling when he realized that the mysterious force that caused that apocryphal apple to land on his head was the same force that caused the moon to orbit the earth; or Feynman’s when he achieved that first grudging step toward understanding the nature of the interaction between light and matter, which led eventually to his Nobel Prize.

Sitting among that audience, I could almost feel Feynman looking over my shoulder and whispering in my ear, “You see? That’s why scientists persist in their investigations, why we struggle so desperately for every bit of knowledge, stay up nights seeking the answer to a problem, climb the steepest obstacles to the next fragment of understanding, to finally reach that joyous moment of the kick in the discovery, which is part of the pleasure of finding things out.”* Feynman always said that he did physics not for the glory or for awards and prizes but for the fun of it, for the sheer pleasure of finding out how the world works, what makes it tick.

Feynman’s legacy is his immersion in, and dedication to, science-its logic, its methods, its rejection of dogma, its infinite capacity to doubt. Feynman believed and lived by the credo that science, when used responsibly, can not only be fun but can also be of inestimable value to the future of human society. And like all great scientists, Feynman loved sharing his wonder of nature’s laws with colleagues and laypersons alike. Nowhere is Feynman’s passion for knowledge more clearly displayed than in this collection of his short works (most previously published, one unpublished).

The best way to appreciate the Feynman mystique is to read this book, for here you will find a wide range of topics about which Feynman thought deeply and discoursed so charmingly, not only physics-in the teaching of which he was surpassed by no one-but also religion, philosophy, and academic stage fright; the future o f computing, and of nanotechnology, of which he was the first pioneer; humility, fun in science, and the future of science and civilization; how budding scientists should view the world; and the tragic bureaucratic blindness that led to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, the headline-making report that made “Feynman” a household word. Remarkably, there is very little overlap in these pieces, but in those few places where a story is repeated in another piece, I took the liberty of deleting one of the two occurrences to spare the reader needless repetition. I inserted ellipses (...) to indicate where a repeated “gem” has been deleted. Feynman had a very casual attitude toward proper grammar, as clearly shows in most o f the pieces, which were transcribed from spoken lectures or interviews. 

To maintain the Feynman flavor, therefore, I generally let stand his ungrammatical turns o f phrase. However, where poor or sporadic transcription made a word or phrase incomprehensible or awkward, I edited it for readability. I believe that the result is virtually unspoiled, yet readable, Feynmanese. Acclaimed during his lifetime, revered in memory, Feynman continues to be a source o f wisdom to people from all walks of life. I hope this treasury of his best talks, interviews, and articles will stimulate and entertain generations of devoted fans and newcomers to Feynman’s unique and often rambunctious mind.

So read, enjoy, and don’t be afraid to laugh out loud occasionally or to learn a lesson or two about life; be inspired; above all, experience the pleasure of finding things out about an uncommon human being. I would like to thank Michelle and Carl Feynman for their generosity and constant support from both coasts; Dr. Judith Goodstein, Bonnie Ludt, and Shelley Erwin of the Caltech archives for their indispensable help and hospitality; and especially professor Freeman Dyson for his elegant and enlightening Foreword. I would also like to express my thanks to John Gribbin, Tony Hey, Melanie Jackson, and Ralph Leighton for their frequent and excellent advice throughout the making of this book.

                                                                                                 Jeffrey Robbins,

                                                                                          Reading, Massachusetts,

                                                                                                 September 1999

This is the edited transcript of an interview with Feynman made for the BBC television program Horizon in 1981, shown in the United States as an episode of Nova. Feynman had most of his life behind him by this time (he died in 1988), so he could reflect on his experiences and accomplishments with the perspective not often attainable by a younger person. The result is a candid, relaxed, and very personal discussion on many topics close to Feynman’s heart: why knowing merely the name of something is the same as not knowing anything at all about it; how he and his fellow atomic scientists of the Manhattan Project could drink and revel in the success of the terrible weapon they had created while on the other side of the world in Hiroshima thousands of their fellow human beings were dead or dying from it; and why Feynman could just as well have gotten along with out a Nobel Prize.