That's why I think context, especially with a character like Feynman,
might be crucial. Damned near everything he said was with a wink,
and I suspect he might not have been above making bold misstatements
to lure great minds out of hiding. And he could have been just plain
"wrong." However, I think the crucial lesson here is that statements
can, even while "wrong," contain, or lead to, truths. The
presumption of correctness is poisonous to the fertile mind; so is
the terror of being wrong.
My contact with Feynman has been zero, except when his brilliance
shone with penetrating energy, yea, even through the Toob. And his
books, of course. I did attend a talk in the Arcadia CA library when
Ralph Leighton's book, "Tuva or Bust" came out. It was clear that
Feynman's life force (determined joy?) had stimulated Leighton to
explore his own inner self. Who could forget the ironic challenge he
laid before ass-covering bureaucrats and politicians with a simple
glass of ice-water and an o-ring? That one act alone illuminated the
institutional rigidity (hence, again ironically, the brittleness) of
one of the "greatest" "scientific" institutions in the world. Anyone
should have been able to see, with crystal clarity, that the
government was being run by self-serving bozos who could blithely
override technical competence (none dare call it treason?). Sadder
yet, no engineer, no scientist, no manager, no flunky in the whole
in-the-loop crowd, would risk his job in defiance of stupidity. The
failure of a robo-nation to rise up in riot must have weighed heavily
on Feynman.
Even if Feynman had been a dummy, he would have been a personality of
great magnitude.
WT
At 08:13 AM 2/21/2008, William Silvert wrote:
It might be worth adding that Einstein probably would also have
disagreed with Feynman on this point. The original test of general
relativity proved it false. Einsten didn't give up, and is even
alledged to have faked some calculations to support his view, and
eventually a flaw was found in the experiment and subsequent work
was consistent with the theory. Hey, if you have a good theory you
don't give it up without a fight.
I might add that my only personal contact with Feynman was at a
meeting of the American Physical Society where he presented his
black hole theory of the nucleus. It was wrong.
Bill Silvert
----- Original Message ----- From: "Wayne Tyson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2008 5:58 AM
Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Ecology and Theory and Evidence and Limitations
and so on Re: [ECOLOG-L] Anderson's new book,
There's one distinction that might need to be made, maybe
not. When Feynman said, "If it disagrees with [the?] experiment,
it's wrong. In that simple statement is the
key to science. It doesn't make a difference how beautiful your
guess is. It doesn't make a difference how smart you are, who made
the guess or what his name
is... (laughter) If it disagrees with [the?] experiment, it's
wrong. That's all there is to it." I hope everyone who reads this
list understands that Feynman means that the guess is wrong if the
experiment demonstrates otherwise (not the experiment), or that if
I am mistaken in this presumption that I will be corrected. I
suspect that a transcript of Feynman's lecture, especially a
fragment thereof, could be misinterpreted in the absence of the
context of the actual lecture, even Feynman's way of expressing himself.
