#108 – The Meaning of It All by Richard Feynman; a summary
Richard P. Feynman was one of the 20th century’s most brilliant theoretical physicists and original thinkers. He all but rebuilt the theory of quantum electrodynamics. It was for this work that he shared the Nobel Prize in 1965.
Of course, Feynman is also famous for another reason: his practical jokes and jovial childlike character, revealed in stories and books like the famous collection of anecdotes Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! The Meaning of It All is a collection of three public lectures Feynman gave to a lay audience at the University of Washington, Seattle, in April 1963. These lectures are timeless and their message critical for both science and society. What follows is my summary of its first lecture. In his first lecture, “The Uncertainty of Science”, Feynman explains the nature of science. He points out that we shouldn’t be too precise in defining words.
Feynman explains that science is a special method of finding things out. Three aspects of science are then discussed.
Feynman further explains that the fact that something is not scientific (i.e., not testable) is not that it is wrong or stupid. It means just that. It is not scientific. The importance of the explanatory content of a scientific theory is then stressed.
We can use an example to illustrate this point. If I propose a theory such as “It will rain,” then I have made a somewhat empty and uninteresting claim. All sorts of questions of specificity arise. Where will it rain? When will it rain? How much will it rain? My claim lacks explanatory content. It does not explain anything. Hence, it is automatically uninteresting to test. However, if I propose my theory of the weather tomorrow as “It will rain between half a centimeter and a centimeter at 2:00 PM in Southern Mumbai due to moisture-laden air from the Indian Ocean,” then I have made a hard-to-vary claim that is scientifically interesting to test. The more specific the theory, the more powerful it is, the more liable it is to exceptions, and the more exciting and valuable it is to check. Then Feynman speaks of the sources of ideas. People used to believe that the job of science was to make many observations and that those observations would themselves suggest the laws. But it does not work that way. As Feynman says, “It takes much more imagination than that.”
There is no authority who decides what is a good idea. The old laws may be wrong. But how can an observation be incorrect? If it has been carefully checked, how can it be wrong? Why are physicists constantly having to change the laws? Feynman explains this is because “first, the laws are not the observations and, second, that experiments are always inaccurate. The laws are guessed laws, extrapolations, not something that the observations insist upon. They are just good guesses that have gone through the sieve so far. And it turns out later that the sieve now has smaller holes than the sieves that were used before, and this time the law is caught. So the laws are guessed; they are extrapolations into the unknown. You do not know what is going to happen, so you take a guess.” Feynman embraces the conjectural nature of all explanations and theories.
Scientists, therefore, are used to dealing with doubt and uncertainty. All scientific knowledge is uncertain. Feynman explains this experience with doubt and uncertainty is of great value, and he believes one that extends beyond the sciences.
Feynman doesn’t want us to forget the importance of the struggle that permitted this freedom to doubt.
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