Feynman R. The Meaning of It All (1963)(52s).pdf

The Meaning of it All

Richard Feynman

THE MEANING OF IT ALL

by Richard P. Feynman

Richard P. Feynman was one of this century's most brilliant theoretical physicists and

original thinkers. Born in Far Rockaway, New York, in 1918, he studied at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he graduated with a BS in 1939. He went

on to Princeton and received his Ph.D. in 1942. During the war years he worked at the

Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. He became Professor of Theoretical Physics at

Cornell University, where he worked with Hans Bethe. He all but rebuilt the theory of

quantum electrodynamics and it was for this work that he shared the Nobel Prize in 1965.

His simplified rules of calculation became standard tools of theoretical analysis in both

quantum electrodynamics and high-energy physics. Feynman was a visiting professor at

the California Institute of Technology in 1950, where he later accepted a permanent

faculty appointment, and became Richard Chace Tolman Professor of Theoretical

Physics in 1959. He had an extraordinary ability to communicate his science to audiences

at all levels, and was a well-known and popular lecturer. Richard Feynman died in 1988

after a long illness. Freeman Dyson, of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,

New Jersey, called him 'the most original mind of his generation', while in its obituary

The New York Times described him as 'arguably the most brilliant, iconoclastic and

influential of the postwar generation of theoretical physicists'.

A number of collections and adaptations of his lectures have been published, including

The Feynman Lectures on Physics, QED (Penguin, 1990), The Character of Physical Law

(Penguin, 1992), Six Easy Pieces (Penguin, 1998), The Meaning of It All (Penguin, 1999)

and Six Not-So-Easy

Pieces (Allen Lane, 1998; Penguin, 1999). The Feynman Lectures on Gravitation and

The Feynman Lectures on Computation are both forthcoming in Penguin. His memoirs,

Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman, were published in 1985.

The Meaning of It All

Richard P. Feynman

Contents

I.The Uncertainty of Science

II.The Uncertainty of Values

III.This Unscientific Age

These lectures, given in April 1963, are published here for the first time. We are grateful

to Carl Feynman and Michelle Feynman for making this book possible.

The Uncertainty of Science

I WANT TO ADDRESS myself directly to the impact of science on man's ideas in other

fields, a subject Mr. John Danz particularly wanted to be discussed. In the first of these

lectures I will talk about the nature of science and emphasize particularly the existence of

doubt and uncertainty. In the second lecture I will discuss the impact of scientific views

on political questions, in particular the question of national enemies, and on religious

questions. And in the third lecture I will describe how society looks to me—I could say

how society looks to a scientific man, but it is only how it looks to me—and what future

scientific discoveries may produce in terms of social problems.

What do I know of religion and politics? Several friends in the physics departments here

and in other places laughed and said, "I'd like to come and hear what you have to say. I

never knew you were interested very much in those things." They mean, of course, I am

interested, but I would not dare to talk about them.

In talking about the impact of ideas in one field on ideas in another field, one is always

apt to make a fool of oneself. In these days of specialization there are too few people who

have such a deep understanding of two departments of our knowledge that they do not

make fools of themselves in one or the other.

The ideas I wish to describe are old ideas. There is practically nothing that I am going to

say tonight that could not easily have been said by philosophers of the seventeenth

century. Why repeat all this? Because there are new generations born every day. Because

there are great ideas developed in the history of man, and these ideas do not last unless

they are passed purposely and clearly from generation to generation.

Many old ideas have become such common knowledge that it is not necessary to talk

about or explain them again. But the ideas associated with the problems of the

development of science, as far as I can see by looking around me, are not of the kind that

everyone appreciates. It is true that a large number of people do appreciate them. And in

a university particularly most people appreciate them, and you may be the wrong

audience for me.

Now in this difficult business of talking about the impact of the ideas of one field on

tho se of another, I shall start at the end that I know. I do know about science. I know its

ideas and its methods, its attitudes toward knowledge, the sources of its progress, its

mental discipline. And therefore, in this first lecture, I shall talk about the science that I

know, and I shall leave the more ridiculous of my statements for the next two lectures, at

which, I assume, the general law is that the audiences will be smaller.

What is science? The word is usually used to mean one of three things, or a mixture of

them. I do not think we need to be precise—it is not always a good idea to be too precise.

Science means, sometimes, a special method of finding things out. Sometimes it means

the body of knowledge arising from the things found out. It may also mean the new

things you can do when you have found something out, or the actual doing of new things.

This last field is usually called technology—but if you look at the science section in Time

magazine you will find it covers about 50 percent what new things are found out and

about 50 percent what new things can be and are being done. And so the popular

definition of science is partly technology, too.

I want to discuss these three aspects of science in reverse order. I will begin with the new

things that you can do—that is, with technology. The most obvious characteristic of

science is its application, the fact that as a consequence of science one has a power to do

things. And the effect this power has had need hardly be mentioned. The whole industrial

revo lution would almost have been impossible without the development of science. The

possibilities today of producing quantities of food adequate for such a large population,

of controlling sickness—the very fact that there can be free men without the necessity of

slavery for full production—are very likely the result of the development of scientific

means of production.

Now this power to do things carries with it no instructions on how to use it, whether to

use it for good or for evil. The product of this power is either good or evil, depending on

how it is used. We like improved production, but we have problems with automation. We

are happy with the development of medicine, and then we worry about the number of

births and the fact that no one dies from the diseases we have eliminated. Or else, with

the same knowledge of bacteria, we have hidden laboratories in which men are working

as hard as they can to develop bacteria for which no one else will be able to find a cure.

We are happy with the development of air transportation and are impressed by the great

airplanes, but we are aware also of the severe horrors of air war. We are pleased by the

ability to communicate between nations, and then we worry about the fact that we can be

snooped upon so easily. We are excited by the fact that space can now be entered; well,

we will undoubtedly have a difficulty there, too. The most famous of all these imbalances

is the development of nuclear energy and its obvious problems.

Is science of any value?

I think a power to do something is of value.Whether the result is a good thing or a bad

thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.

Once in Hawaii I was taken to see a Buddhist temple. In the temple a man said, "I am

going to tell you something that you will never forget." And then he said, "To every man

is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell."

And so it is with science. In a way it is a key to the gates of heaven, and the same key

opens the gates of hell, and we do not have any instructions as to which is which gate.

Shall we throw away the key and never have a way to enter the gates of heaven? Or shall

we struggle with the problem of which is the best way to use the key? That is, of course,

a very serious question, but I think that we cannot deny the value of the key to the gates

of heaven.

All the major problems of the relations between society and science lie in this same area.

When the scientist is told that he must be more responsible for his effects on society, it is

the applications of science that are referred to. If you work to develop nuclear energy you

must realize also that it can be used harmfully. Therefore, you would expect that, in a

discussion of this kind by a scientist, this would be the most important topic. But I will

not talk about it further. I think that to say these are scientific problems is an

exaggeration. They are far more humanitarian problems. The fact that how to work the

power is clear, but how to control it is not, is something not so scientific and is not

something that the scientist knows so much about.

Let me illustrate why I do not want to talk about this. Some time ago, in about 1949 or

1950, I went to Brazil to teach physics. There was a Point Four program in those days,

which was very exciting—everyone was going to help the underdeveloped countries.

What they needed, of course, was technical know-how.

In Brazil I lived in the city of Rio. In Rio there are hills on which are homes made with

broken pieces of wood from old signs and so forth. The people are extremely poor. They

have no sewers and no water. In order to get water they carry old gasoline cans on their

heads down the hills. They go to a place where a new building is being built, because

there they have water for mixing cement. The people fill their cans with water and carry

them up the hills. And later you see the water dripping down the hill in dirty sewage. It is

a pitiful thing.

Right next to these hills are the exciting buildings of the Copacabana beach, beautiful

apartments, and so on.

And I said to my friends in the Point Four program, "Is this a problem of technical know-

how? They don't know how to put a pipe up the hill? They don't know how to put a pipe

to the top of the hill so that the people can at least walk uphill with the empty cans and

downhill with the full cans?"

So it is not a problem of technical know-how. Certainly not, because in the neighboring

apartment buildings there are pipes, and there are pumps. We realize that now. Now we

think it is a problem of economic assistance, and we do not know whether that really

works or not. And the question of how much it costs to put a pipe and a pump to the top

of each of the hills is not one that seems worth discussing, to me.

Although we do not know how to solve the problem, I would like to point out that we

tried two things, technical know-how and economic assistance. We are discouraged with

them both, and we are trying something else. As you will see later, I find this

encouraging. I think that to keep trying new solutions is the way to do everything.

Those, then are the practical aspects of science, the new things that you can do. They are

so obvious that we do not need to speak about them further.

The next aspect of science is its contents, the things that have been found out. This is the

yield. This is the gold. This is the excitement, the pay you get for all the disciplined

thinking and hard work. The work is not done for the sake of an application. It is done for

the excitement of what is found out. Perhaps most of you know this. But to those of you

who do not know it, it is almost impossible for me to convey in a lecture this important

aspect, this exciting part, the real reason for science. And without understanding this you

miss the whole point. You cannot understand science and its relation to anything else

unless you understand and appreciate the great adventure of our time. You do not live in

your time unless you understand that this is a tremendous adventure and a wild and

exciting thing.

Do you think it is dull? It isn't. It is most difficult to convey, but perhaps I can give some

idea of it. Let me start anywhere, with any idea.

For instance, the ancients believed that the earth was the back of an elephant that stood

on a tortoise that swam in a bottomless sea. Of course, what held up the sea was another

question. They did not know the answer.

The belief of the ancients was the result of imagination. It was a poetic and beautiful idea.

Look at the way we see it today. Is that a dull idea? The world is a spinning ball, and

people are held on it on all sides, some of them upside down. And we turn like a spit in

front of a great fire. We whirl around the sun. That is more romantic, more exciting. And

what holds us? The force of gravitation, which is not only a thing of the earth but is the

thing that makes the earth round in the first place, holds the sun together and keeps us

running around the sun in our perpetual attempt to stay away. This gravity holds its sway

not only on the stars but between the stars; it holds them in the great galaxies for miles

and miles in all directions.

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