Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman

The nuclear physicist Hans Bethe once described Dr. Feynman as a “magician.” He’s right. It takes a certain amount of magic to make science as fun, compelling, and simple as Feynman did.

I’d just fix them so they would work. But the whole problem of discovering what was the matter, and figuring out what you have to do to fix it—that was interesting to me, like a puzzle.

I learned there that innovation is a very difficult thing in the real world.

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way—by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

People often think I’m a faker, but I’m usually honest, in a certain way—in such a way that often nobody believes me!

But you have to have absolute confidence. Keep right on going, and nothing will happen.

I concluded the theme with a little verse I made up, which pointed out this problem of introspection: I wonder why. I wonder why. I wonder why I wonder. I wonder why I wonder why I wonder why I wonder!

Learn what the rest of the world is like. The variety is worthwhile.

So I found hypnosis to be a very interesting experience. All the time you’re saying to yourself, ‘I could do that, but I won’t’—which is just another way of saying that you can’t.

The electron is a theory that we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we can almost call it real.

When it came time for me to give my talk on the subject, I started off by drawing an outline of the cat and began to name the various muscles. The other students in the class interrupt me: ‘We know all that!’ ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘you do? Then no wonder I can catch up with you so fast after you’ve had four years of biology.’ They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes.

But that was my big moment: I gave a seminar in the biology department at Harvard! I always do that, get into something and see how far I can go.

I’ve very often made mistakes in my physics by thinking the theory isn’t as good as it really is, thinking that there are lots of complications that are going to spoil it—an attitude that anything can happen, in spite of what you’re pretty sure should happen.

They gave out dark glasses that you could watch it with. Dark glasses! Twenty miles away, you couldn’t see a damn thing through dark glasses. So I figured the only thing that could really hurt your eyes (bright light can never hurt your eyes) is ultraviolet light. I got behind a truck windshield, because the ultraviolet can’t go through glass, so that would be safe, and so I could see the damn thing.

Time comes, and this tremendous flash out there is so bright that I duck, and I see this purple splotch on the floor of the truck. I said, ‘That’s not it. That’s an after-image.’ So I look back up, and I see this white light changing into yellow and then into orange. Clouds form and disappear again—from the compression and expansion of the shock wave. Finally, a big ball of orange, the center that was so bright, becomes a ball of orange that starts to rise and billow a little bit and get a little black around the edges, and then you see it’s a big ball of smoke with flashes on the inside of the fire going out, the heat. All this took about one minute. It was a series from bright to dark, and I had seen it. I am about the only guy who actually looked at the damn thing—the first Trinity test. Everybody else had dark glasses, and the people at six miles couldn’t see it because they were all told to lie on the floor. I’m probably the only guy who saw it with the human eye.

You see, what happened to me—what happened to the rest of us—is we started for a good reason, then you’re working very hard to accomplish something and it’s a pleasure, it’s excitement. And you stop thinking, you know; you just stop. Bob Wilson was the only one who was still thinking about it, at that moment.

It was a brilliant idea: You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.

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.

they could pass the examinations, and ‘learn’ all this stuff, and not know anything at all, except what they had memorized.

Then I gave the analogy of a Greek scholar who loves the Greek language, who knows that in his own country there aren’t many children studying Greek. But he comes to another country, where he is delighted to find everybody studying Greek—even the smaller kids in the elementary schools. He goes to the examination of a student who is coming to get his degree in Greek, and asks him, ‘What were Socrates’ ideas on the relationship between Truth and Beauty?’—and the student can’t answer. Then he asks the student, ‘What did Socrates say to Plato in the Third Symposium?’ The student lights up and goes, ‘Brrrrrrrr-up’—he tells you everything, word for word, that Socrates said, in beautiful Greek. But what Socrates was talking about in the Third Symposium was the relationship between Truth and Beauty! What this Greek scholar discovers is, the students in another country learn Greek by first learning to pronounce the letters, then the words, and then sentences and paragraphs. They can recite, word for word, what Socrates said, without realizing that those Greek words actually mean something. To the student they are all artificial sounds. Nobody has ever translated them into words the students can understand.

So I wrote them back a letter that said, ‘After reading the salary, I’ve decided that I must refuse. The reason I have to refuse a salary like that is I would be able to do what I’ve always wanted to do—get a wonderful mistress, put her up in an apartment, buy her nice things …. With the salary you have offered, I could actually do that, and I know what would happen to me. I’d worry about her, what she’s doing; I’d get into arguments when I come home, and so on. All this bother would make me uncomfortable and unhappy. I wouldn’t be able to do physics well, and it would be a big mess! What I’ve always wanted to do would be bad for me, so I’ve decided that I can’t accept your offer.’

Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that’s the end of you.

We often had long discussions about art and science. I’d say things like, ‘Artists are lost: they don’t have any subject! They used to have the religious subjects, but they lost their religion and now they haven’t got anything. They don’t understand the technical world they live in; they don’t know anything about the beauty of the real world—the scientific world—so they don’t have anything in their hearts to paint.’ Jerry would reply that artists don’t need to have a physical subject; there are many emotions that can be expressed through art. Besides, art can be abstract. Furthermore, scientists destroy the beauty of nature when they pick it apart and turn it into mathematical equations.

I understood that to sell a drawing is not to make money, but to be sure that it’s in the home of someone who really wants it; someone who would feel bad if they didn’t have it. This was interesting.

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.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.

So I have just one wish for you—the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.