Stargazing Guy

– 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 lecture 1. The full quote states:

“If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.”

volume I; lecture 1, “Atoms in Motion”; section 1-2, “Matter is made of atoms”; p. 1-2

You are correct, I have already used this quote (week 16 of 52 if you want to check!). It feels right to include it again, in the order of the other quotes extracted from his lectures. So, no apology from me.

The power of the scientific method is its repeatability. If all religious knowledge were to be destroyed, it could not be replicated as-is, new religions would be created. But the scientific method would rediscover all the laws, theories, processes, ideas, etc all over again – as they exist independently of humanity.

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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