– Richard P. Feynman (11 May 1918 – 15 Feb 1988)
From the Manhattan Project to the Challenger investigation, the physicist and Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman loved to shoot down what he called “lousy ideas.” Today, the world is awash in lousy ideas — so maybe it’s time to get some more Feynman in our lives?
Credit: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-curious-mr-feynman/
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This is part of a lecture by Feynman from his 1964 Lecture on Physics, from the introduction of the first lecture. The full quote states:
“Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation, because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again or, more likely, to be corrected. … The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific ‘truth’.”
volume I; lecture 1, “Atoms in Motion”; section 1-1, “Introduction”; p. 1-1
Feynman, again, emphasising the importance of science as a process of learning and discovery.
More quotes taken from The Feynman Lectures on Physics next time.
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PS: I love coffee. BuyMeACoffee, leave a message with a date and time and we can share it, remotely, at the same time, and think about the Cosmos.
In the meantime, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else, too, because as Adam Smith said, “we naturally desire not only to be loved but to be lovely”.
Remember, hope lives here.
Opening image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Feynman_at_Los_Alamos.jpg
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