
Collection of Richard Feynman talks on the scientific method, learning, and CS - skotzko
http://chill.com/brian/collection/richard-feynman-talks
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Arjuna
If you are interested in physics and have not seen Dr. Feynman's 7-part
lecture series entitled _The Character of Physical Law_ , you really owe it to
yourself to watch them in their entirety [1]. The site's interface has some
neat features, such as links into the transcript and notes related to the
topic being discussed.

Dr. Feynman delivered these lectures as part of the "Messenger Lectures" [2]
series at Cornell University in 1964:

Lecture 1: Law of Gravitation - An Example of Physical Law

Lecture 2: The Relation of Mathematics and Physics

Lecture 3: The Great Conservation Principles

Lecture 4: Symmetry in Physical Law

Lecture 5: The Distinction of Past and Future

Lecture 6: Probability and Uncertainty - The Quantum Mechanical View of Nature

Lecture 7: Seeking New Laws

[1] Requires SilverLight:
<http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/index.html>

[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_Lectures>

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jacquesm
Fortunately they're also on youtube, if you - like me - either don't like
silverlight or you can't install it on your computer:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-JKAHaml7A>

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Nadacambia
<http://xkcd.com/182/> (Maybe someday science will get over its giant
collective crush on Richard Feynman. But I doubt it!)

Stephen Wolfram on Richard Feynman :
<http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/recent/feynman/>

A famous letter Feynman sent to Wolfram :
[http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/06/you-dont-understand-
ord...](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/06/you-dont-understand-ordinary-
people.html)

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why-el
His answer on why he does not believe in Computer Science is pretty
convincing. What I would love to have happened is a professor telling me that
what I am going to be learning is not exactly science. Nobody did, so I spent
a couple of years trying to scientify things.

~~~
mistercow
I've heard others give the same argument, but I don't find it very compelling.
There's no rule that says that science cannot be applied to purely human
endeavors. We would not say that sociology is not a science, even though it is
a study of a purely human concept. Science is simply a method of increasing
your knowledge of a system. It doesn't matter if that system is the bare
physical universe, the chemical interactions within a cell, or the flow of
data and logic in a computer program.

One unambiguous application of the scientific method to computing is in
debugging. Your program behaves unexpectedly – aha! a new phenomenon. The
lateral thinking hardware in your brain engages as you tinker around,
reproducing the bug and noticing the conditions in which it happens. You
gather all of this together with your existing knowledge of the system, and
come up with an explanation for the bug – a hypothesis! Then you try to
falsify your hypothesis. You might try to falsify it by watching a value in
the debugger, for example. Or you might modify your program and see if the bug
persists or changes its behavior. You aren't usually recording all of this on
paper, because in this case you don't care much about presenting your findings
to others. Others will be satisfied if the bug is gone. And of course, you
probably aren't thinking of the _words_ "hypothesis" and "experiment". But
that's what you did, and that's why you figured out the bug.

(On the other hand, some programmers try to debug their programs by poking and
picking randomly at their code until they get it working. I would urge them to
try adopting a scientific approach. It's not just a way to satisfy a teacher
in a chemistry lab, as it turns out.)

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zerohp
Actually, people still say that sociology, and other social "sciences" are not
science. You're assuming that the scientific method is science, but its more
than that. Many modern fields of endeavor call themselves sciences mostly
because of the success of science. They only superficially emulate science.
This includes Computer Science, which is really mathematics and engineering.

Feynman himself speaks about it: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaO69CF5mbY>

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mistercow
Feynman is talking there about things which call themselves science but do not
actually correctly follow the scientific method. The distinction between "the
scientific method" and "science" is meaningless, and the claim that CS does
not qualify as a science because it only deals with something manmade is
little more than elitism.

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imaginaryunit
Feynman's view on CS is similar by Hal Abelson's take on the term (see
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQLUPjefuWA>). Abelson's point about CS being
more like magic has always stuck with me.

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tikhonj
I really loved the portrayal of programmers as sorcerers and programs as
spells in SICP. It's a very apt metaphor.

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packetslave
I still enjoy reading Danny Hillis's story of Feynman's days working at
Thinking Machines, whenever I happen to run across it.

[http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-
machine...](http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/)

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rgower
Don't forget The Feynman Series <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRmbwczTC6E>

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EREFUNDO
"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum
mechanics."

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27182818284
I'm so terribly bored by the same Feynman lectures reposted again and again to
either YC, Facebook, or Reddit. Do a search and they come up again and again.

I wish there were more lectures by others spread around. Say John Bardeen, for
example.

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Eliezer
Yeah! Feynman should write some new stuff already!

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27182818284
no no no, just recognize that all that is awesome with physics doesn't begin
and end with Feynman! Share the love!

