I love this video. I watched it when I was growing up and loved it. Now, it’s on YouTube. It’s a wide ranging profile of eloquent genius Richard Feynman. It’s also an example of the kind of intelligent science programming that the BBC used to do. Now it’s all archeology and anti-science. It’s in five parts all added below. (Hat tip: Just think.)
My favourite quote about Feynman:
"The Feynman Problem-Solving Algorithm: (1) write down the problem; (2) think very hard; (3) write down the answer." – Murray Gell-mann
(Previous rants on the BBC’s mission to dumb down science programming: BBC dumbs down science and Cultural relativism doesn’t work at 30,000 feet.)
Part one
Part two
Part three
Part four
Part five
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Mathew, thanks for this it was brilliant.
I’ve just spent an hour watching the videos that I can’t charge clients for, but feel more rewarded.
As a scientst myself, I have major concerns about the increasing “relevance” of convienient mumbo jumbo dressed up in scientific style language, but knowing that there are still some amoungst us that value real science has made my week.
I’ll need to find out more about this guy (I wish he was my physics lecturer!!).
Cheers from sunny Australia
Feynman is one of my childhood heroes (along with Sir David (Attenborough). Sadly I have a personal anecdote only about the latter.
db
In the 70s I studied physics according to Feynman’s books translated to Russian.
Somewhere I have a copy “on tape” of Feynman’s seminal lectures on QED…I reviewed them for New Scientist when they were published in the early 1990s…
…I must dig them out and convert to mp3 so I can re-listen on my player while walking the dog.
db
Thank you for the opportunity to listen to Richard Feynman. I wll be back to listen again and again. I feel there are so many possible ways to think about questions when I listen to him speak. What a free spirit he is:0)
The simplicity of the man and how he thinks makes his brilliance possible. If you can’t test it you can’t know it. In my opinion, as important as his contributions to physics are, his value as a teacher supersedes them. If the Nobel Prize folks want to do something meaningful, they should give him one for teaching.
You know what attracted me most in your post? That phrase: ‘ the pleasure of finding things out’. Is it not a hallmark that describes each and every individual? Is it or is it not on a par with any other pleasure an individual can experience? Is it not even more wholesome than any other pleasure possible?
Should we be on the caliber of Feynman, to acknowledge in ourselves, ‘the pleasure of finding things out’ ? Why are we so modest or have we been reduced to admire more who said it, than what is said? I think this is disservice to Feynman and to us all, alike.