Richard Feynman is inarguably one of the most well-known physicists of the modern scientific era. A Los Alamos alum, Nobel-Prize winner, and member of the Rogers Commission, Feynman was an anomaly in the scientific community, like Kary Mullis but with a real passion for science and its integrity. So it’s fitting that his autobiography, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, is maybe the funniest nonfiction book I’ve read. The book is essentially a collection of short episodes from Feynman’s life, ranging from his earliest memories experimenting with electric lamps and fixing radios to teaching at Caltech and reviewing textbooks for the state of California; it almost feels like a TV serial, with all the comedy and drama and the hectic pace.
One of the most important threads throughout the book is Feynman’s outlook on the nature of science, which is itself divided into two main ideas. In the first half of the book, Feynman’s fascination with science almost flies off the page; his natural curiosity leads him across the country, from MIT to Princeton to Los Alamos. His awe of the great men he meets is utterly subsumed by his passion for physics, to the point that he calls people like Hans Bethe and Niels Bohr crazy. It is Feynman’s frankness and his unabashed pursuit of truth that earns him the respect of these men, and leads him directly from graduate school to the Manhattan Project. After the war, Feynman teaches at Cornell, and becomes paralyzed by the idea that he must work on something IMPORTANT; in a pivotal episode, he realizes that he only enjoys physics when he pursues problems or ideas for his own sake, rather than in some effort to try to find something big.
In the second half of the book, Feynman shifts focus from his love of creativity to the idea of scientific integrity and education. On a trip to Brazil, Feynman discovers that the academic curriculum is based almost entirely on memorization rather than actual understanding; thus starts his crusade against conventional methods of teaching science. At Caltech, Feynman joins the education board and critiques existing science textbooks, pointing out how these books teach physics and science without explaining using real examples, relying on abstractions and expecting students to simply memorize and repeat. His final anecdote is a testimony against so-called “Cargo Cult Science”, entire fields of study including both real science and pseudoscience which proceed with experiments and theories without any semblance of scientific rigor. These later moments of the book are indicative of Feynman’s attitude on the Rogers Commission investigating the Challenger disaster, in which his scathing indictment of NASA’s culture hinged on the idea that their processes and standards were not based in practical reality, but rather on vague standards and abstractions.
Of course, Feynman was not a sparkling clean person himself, and it shows. His misogyny is laced throughout the book, especially in the second half after his first wife passes away and he moves to Cornell. He claims a complete lack of responsibility for the state of the world (a convenient viewpoint for someone who worked on developing an atom bomb). The book has a certain lack of gravitas that makes even its weightier moments read, ironically, like a joke. But despite his flaws, Feynman’s ideas remain pivotal to our cultural understanding of science and technology. His absolute pursuit of rigorous truth remains a standard for scientists today, and his willingness to research and pursue ideas well outside his own scientific field are a testament to the power of interdisciplinary research. With his antics and public image, he helped create a new, post-Einstein image of the scientist—no longer greying and formal, but funny, passionate, and just a little crazy, with a love for the truth and reason but willing to bend the rules a little to see where things might go. Where each story was a new episode of some scientific puzzle show, each path a bold new step into the weird unknown. And we’re still following in his footsteps.
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