The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman [Hardcover]

This book is not meant to be entertaining, but I suppose a glimpse into Mr. Feynman's mind cannot help but be entertaining, even when it is a series of lectures based entirely on science. Here he talks about what he calls the "thrill" of boldly finding out what no man knew before, on subjects ranging from the discovery of the reasons behind the crash of the space shuttle Challenger to the atomic bomb project at Los Alamos and from the role of science in society to his Nobel acceptance speech. And while it is not specifically written with the non-scientist in mind, a strong background in science is not necessary to understand and enjoy the wind-ranging collection of philosophies, musings, and remarks collected on these pages.

There are some amusing things in this book and some interesting details, but there really isn't anything special except for the fact that Feynman enjoys the personality cult associated with a zany physics genius. He was an original character and, in physics, a truly great thinker. But that doesn't make every last little thing that he ever said or scribbled down interesting, except to uncritical devotees who live with the fantasy that everything he said was better than worthwhile. Indeed, if you know about something in great depth he writes (well talks) about, his views appear as superficial as the rest of non-specialists on the subjects. Where he is truly interesting in on physics, mathematics, and science - and the overwhelming majority of what he produced on those subjects is already available.

I would not recommend this book, except as a source of Feynman trivia if that is your bag. Indeed, I had heard most of these things before - either in films about the man or from his earlier writings. As such, that makes this book the crassest attempt to commercially exploit the legacy of this great man yet again. If such a thing were possible, the editor should be ashamed.

On the way back from the Popper Centenary Conference, in the airport Frankfurt, curiosity won over skepticism, also I had a few euros to unload, so I took on board this collection of "best short works". I now consider the euros well spent and Feynman fully deserving of respect and admiration.

Under the circumstances, with a satchel of Popper stuff from Vienna, the most striking thing about Feynman was his relentlessly critical, imaginative and enthusiastic approach to everything, especially science. In short, he lived and breathed the philosophy of Karl Popper. That might have surprised him because it is hard to say whether he had the most contempt for philosophers or for the soft social sciences.

Maybe Feynman is too hard on the social sciences. It is helpful to remember that physicists restrict their predictions to model systems, otherwise they settle for explanations in principle. We can explain in principle the trajectory of leaves that fall off a tree but nobody would be expected to predict which ones will end up in the street and which will fly up on to the roof and block your gutter. Similarly in some areas of the social sciences (those that are not pure ideology and verbalism) we can predict tendencies, such as increased prices due to import restrictions, without being able to predict the size of the increase due to the many other factors that are involved in setting prices.

Feynman had the incredible good fortune to be in the right place at the right time but that would not have worked if he did not have the capacity to do the right thing at the right time as well. Like all great artists and scientists, he was captivated by his work, so at times nothing else mattered. That saved him from nerves, even as youth, when he found himself lecturing to an audience that included Einstein and other great men in the field. His hands were shaking when he took his papers from the envelope to start talking . "Then something happened to me which has always happened since...If I'm talking physics , I love the thing, I think only about physics, I don't worry where I am; I don't worry about anything". This probably also saved him from being disabled by the impending death of his first wife who was fading away while he worked on the Big Bomb at Los Alamos.

His capacity to focus on the physics and not the audience made him an invaluable foil for Bohr. Everyone else was so overawed by Bohr that they never challenged his ideas. "I was always worried by the physics; if the idea looked lousy, I said it looked lousy...later Bohr said to his son 'He's the only guy who is not afraid of me, and will say when I've got a crazy idea...when we want to discuss ideas, we're not able to do it with these guys who say everything is yes, yes Dr Bohr. Get that guy first.'"

Like most collections of occasional pieces, there is a tendency to repetition of key themes such as the uncertainty of all knowledge and the inferior nature of the social sciences. Also it tends to lack continuity and physics buffs will probably find that it lacks depth. This is because almost all of the pieces were written for general audiences and for most of us the lack of depth is a strong point because we only get lost in the depths.