Successful scientists have often been people with wide interests. Their originality may have derived from their diverse knowledge … Originality often consists in linking up ideas whose connection was not previously suspected.
[…]
Therefore reading ought not to be confined to the problem under investigation nor even to one’s own field of science, nor, indeed, to science alone.
(Source: brainpickings.org)
— Feynman
Feynman on Science and Certainty
“The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty damn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress, we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain. Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure, that it is possible to live and not know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.”
Richard Feynman, The Value of Science (1955)
There’s definitely something wrong here. Neil deGrasse Tyson nails it in a sentence.
(Source: thesacredspring, via therecipe)
“We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.”
-Richard Feynman
“In his famous Lectures on Physics, Richard Feynman presented this interesting speculation:
“If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.” “
Blue waves produced by bioluminescent phytoplankton: Vaadhoo Island in the Maldives, Florida Everglades, and Lakshadweep Islands off...
“The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a...
Underwater Ink Photography by Alberto Seveso
Seveso’s silky plumes of technicolored magma that seems to flow up from vents in the ocean has a...
One of my favorite movie scenes of all time. 2 adult lives in 5 minutes without any words. Masterful story telling by those Pixar...
