Put all the theologians in history together, and their contribution to understanding the universe would not even approach those made by this man. And, unlike theologians, when Feynman didn’t know something, he admitted it.
“When you doubt and ask, it gets a little harder to believe. You see, one thing is that I can live with doubt and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. . . But I don’t have to know an answer; I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things—by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me.”
Feynman is God. A truly inspirational man. Thinking he’s no longer with us makes me sad.
Me too.
It is a fact that the right-wing mind cannot stand uncertainty, open questions, things they cannot control. At the same time they torture themselves watching the stocks channel on TV, chewing off their nails. Ambiguity, uncertainty, these are the facts of life *and* science. And we love it. Higgs or no Higgs, both outcomes are exiting. But the theologians and the right wingers cannot stand this.
I think it’s closer to say that these people want control & privileged positions
However I also know secularists & ‘leftists’ who would (if given the power) impose their view of what is right on me ~ their thinking can be as equally free of reason, doubt & uncertainty as the GOP, Baptists etc.
It is a fact that the right-wing mind cannot stand uncertainty
It’s not so much the right-wing, as the religious mind. There are people with a particular mindset, for whom certainty means comfort. Most of us find comfort in some kind of familiar ritual, be it a daily routine, food we remember from childhood or even hugging a teddy bear. Religious people have a strong need for ritual, of course, but on top of that they need to be reassured directly: death is not actually the end, there is a big benevolent Daddy in the sky etc. This need is so strong that they are willing to trade reality for reassurance. It’s a child-like mind, really. Feynman philosophy, on the other hand, is that of a mature person: you can’t always get what you want :-).
Ritual can be an important part of life; rites of passage are essential in many societies, and in Imperial China, one of the most powerful men after the emperor himself was the Minister of Rites and Ceremonies. As mentioned above, many people who do not participate in formal ritual still persist in the familiarity of personal routines. A friend once called me late one Sunday morning and asked if I was busy; I told him I was doing “…Sunday sort of stuff…” and he knew exactly what I meant – reading the paper, doing the crosswords, puttering around in the kitchen.
There are times I almost give in to the urge to catch a midnight mass on December 25th. I sometimes miss the music and the shameless pomp, but I also really don’t want to go back to the Catholic nonsense I left behind so long ago. It’s not that I’m worried that the church will get its hooks back into me – I’m more concerned that I’ll start laughing out loud during the readings or the sermon.
I think John Shelby Spong, author of “The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible’s Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love” among may other books, is in this category but not willing to admit it.
For all intents and purposes he is an atheist, claims theism is dead, jesus is not the son of god, virgin birth is impossible etc.
But I think he loves the ritual and trappings of christianity, sort of a Mr. Dressup for the religious.
More power to him I say if he admits that this is what he is doing. I’ve read the above book by him and at least one other I can’t recall at the moment but it’s hard to pin him down exactly on where he stands, my feeling is he is in the religion is useful camp so let’s not throw it all away but have it mutate into something better.
Feynman philosophy is the mindset of many scientists, especially particle physicists and theorists (as was Feynman): the fact that you live with the uncertainty of your theory or research. Questions about string theory, supersymmetry, and today, the existence of the Higgs particle, are realities scientists live with on a daily basis. For example, it took 20-30 years of experimentation to achieve the creation of Bose-Einstein condensates (a particular state of matter), and people experimented for decades without knowing if they would succeed. On another level, astrophysicists spend decades on space telescope projects that just can dematerialise in a few days, either by cancellation of budgets or the explosion of rocket launchers. The nature of science is intellectual insecurity (and now even material insecurity), which is very different of the life of theologians who never have to question whether what they are thinking is correct, and never have to worry about their jobs.
If I had a dollar for every time I had to say “but I don’t WANT certainty” to a theist… (“and YOU don’t have it!”).
And Feynman sure knew about uncertainty.
“but I don’t WANT certainty”
I doubt that this is true. Even Feynman said “I can live with doubt and uncertainty”, rather than preferring uncertainty, except as compared to fake certainty, which is what religion offers.
I would much prefer to have certainty, if I knew that the certainty was justifiable.
I can understand and agree with “but I don’t WANT certainty”, it is fun to poke at, and[or] solve the unknown. However, as you state, the fake certainty of christians isn’t enjoyable at all. The christians also withhold data, facts, and information to avoid questioning from the masses, which is another of the christians irritating behaviors.
I on the other hand prefer my uncertainty to be certain (quantifiable).
As Vroomfondel and Majikthise said….
I love these thoughts from Feynman!
Feynman’s elegance is sublimis. “I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things”. How could anyone disagree that it’s a grand state of mind. But surely you’re joking mr Feynman.
Let me draw all Feynman enthusiasts’ attention to a new biography of him, focusing on his scientific life: “Quantum Man” by Lawrence Krauss.
Just finished reading it and it’s good. Recommended.
We can all live “with answers that might be wrong.” Scientific knowledge is provisional. I think Feynman meant to say to live “with answers that are almost certainly wrong.” But he said this back before the gnus, when atheists had to tread lightly in criticizing others’ belief in nonsense.
Feynman on science and Christianity:
“That’s the strange world we live in, that all the advances and understanding are used only to continue the nonsense which has existed for 2,000 years [laughter from audience].” —The Mathematical Nature of Physical Law, BBC, available online at Project Tuva
Project Tuva is a Microsoft-only video.
They acquired the rights to Feynman’s “The Mathematical Nature of Physical Law” and put it up in a proprietary format only viewable on their platform. I use Linux/BSD. No “Silverlight”.
The open source Moonlight should play it if it’s not DRM’d. Or use a VM.
“Put all the theologians in history together, and their contribution to understanding the universe would not even approach those made by this man.”
This is true by necessity. Natural science studies the spacetime system and what it contains (theology does not); indeed, the scientific method by its nature is geared towards doing so. Hence if “space-time and all of its contents” is what you mean by “universe,” you haven’t said much.
No it isn’t because many religious people claim that faith and theology have given us empirical truths about the Universe, i.e. Jesus was born of a virgin and came back to life after death, God created all of life in a week, God intervened in evolution to create humans, etc. If those were true they would have led to increased understanding of our universe.
Sadly, all are false.
“Natural” science, as opposed to?
And what does theology study, and how do you know whatever it studies, exists in the first place?
What else is there is to say? Again, what else is there, and how do they know there’s anything else, let alone “study” it?
Rather one should say that the total contribution of all the theologians is an enormous negative since all they have done has been to greatly retard any understanding of the universe.
That is one fine mind. A huge loss; he died far too soon.
We need Feynman and Sagan (and others) now more than ever
Without doubt and uncertainty, there can be no joy of discovery.
Definitely one of the greatest minds to ever walk this planet. That whole H bomb thing did kind of suck though.
Coincidentally, that was exactly the same clip that Lawrence Krauss played in the talk he gave at TAM9 this weekend in Vegas about Feynman (Krauss just published a book about Feynman: Quantum Man).
(Great weekend, by the way. Over 1600 ‘skeptics’, and speakers like Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Bill Nye (the Science Guy), Neil deGrasse Tyson, Eugenie Scott, Carol Tavris, Richard Wiseman, etc etc .. But then again, despite the 1600+ attendees, I still have fonder memories of TAM1, with its 150 participants).
(subscribing)
Yes!
Nail
On
Head!
Excellent video.
Honest search for truth.
No doubt Feynman was “a physicist’s physicist”.
Equally certain seems to be that the man was full of himself, as many a biographic describe AFAIK. One of the ways he liked to promote his own discoveries was to push the claim quite hyperbolically that quantum physics is mysterious,* since he made so many genuine and useful (and alternative) contributions to it.
So I like to think of him as a quite human force for knowledge, he advanced and popularized but he also complicated needlessly (or rather for his own needs).
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* “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”
The Character of Physical Law (1965) Ch. 6; also quoted in The New Quantum Universe (2003) by Tony Hey and Patrick Walters [Wikiquotes]
he advanced and popularized but he also complicated needlessly
Emphatically not. The opposite is true, as anyone who compares Feynman’s beautifully simple against Schwinger’s fantastically obscure approach to quantum electrodynamics. Someone even wrote a poem about this, with Schwinger as the mole, Bohr as the owl, Dyson as the fox, and Feynman as the smart crow flying above everyone else and all creation:
The croaking frogs are the mathematicians. Theologians haven’t earned a place in this history, even as the lowest of animals or even fungi.
How strange to compare these wise words with what’s going down lately in the public arena in the US.
His accent makes me reminisce about my time on Long Island…
The problem with atheists is that they don’t doubt enough.