I haven't forgotten, but ....

I haven't forgotten that I had said I would do a further post on Richard Feynman. I am (slowly) reading James Gleick's biography, and one or two other things. I promise I'll get round to it ...

Richard Feynman: an interim update

I have indicated a delay in my series of posts on Richard Feynman, as I try to do some homework. I think it might be useful, though, to give an indication of what I feel my starting point is for part 4.

I think my starting point has to be the perspective outlined in my post Richard Feynman: part 2. This is largely based on his book The Character of Physical Law. I may stand to be corrected by anyone who has read Six Easy Pieces and Six Not-soEeasy Pieces in more detail than I have, but my reading of them so far suggests that, in so far as the points made in part 2 are concerned, they are in line with The Character of Physical Law.

I also outlined some questions in part 3 1/2. Part 4 will need to try to pick those questions up.

But, in addition to the three books referred to above (where Feynman is speaking directly about physics itself), Richard Feynman also spoke/wrote more directly on questions relating to the meaning of scientific enquiry, including the question of religion in relation to science and the relation of science to other academic disciplines. Some lectures are published in The Meaning of it All; other material appears in The Pleasure of Finding things Out; and there might also be odd bits in the autobiographical Surely, you're joking Mr Feynman. And there are the points from the Lectures on Physics pointed out by Mike Gottlieb in a comment.

Some questions arise from my grouping of Feynman's works in this way.

Qn 1: Is there any difference that can be seen between Feynman's views as expressed in the two groups of works? Does he say things in the second grouping that he does not say in the first?

And, following from this:

Qn 2: Can the advocacy of doubt in science that is a major feature of the second group of works be found in the first group? Or is it unrelated to them?

And related to this:

Qn 3: Where does Richard Feynman's atheism fit in? Does it come "before" his study of nature or does it come "after", as a consequence of, his study of nature?

I do expect to post part 4 sometime during the present year ....

"Thinking faith" , science and religion, and Richard Feynman

"Thinking faith" is an online journal, published by the British Jesuits. It has no regular publication date, new articles being published as and when. You can subscribe to an e-mail alert when each new article is posted.

A recently posted article is entitled "Astronomy, God and the Search for Elegance" and is written by Guy Consolmagno, a Jesuit member of the Vatican Observatory. It is in some ways a disappointing article and left me wondering at the end what particular point, if any, it was trying to make. Nevertheless, there are one or two paragraphs that are worth noting.

"Yet those who would put up a watertight barrier between science and religion miss a very important point. Science and religion do intersect without doubt in at least one point: in the human being who is the scientist, in the human being whose ultimate motivations and yearnings are, overtly or not, religious."

I suspect that there are many scientists (Richard Feynman included) who would vigorously deny any religious motivation to their love of science; Consolmagno seems to suggest that, to adapt a Rahnerian phrase, they are "anonymously religious". This seems an overly optimistic view to take of atheism! However, I do think the paragraph raises an interesting question: Can a case be made that the scientific enterprise is a manifestation of the essentially religious nature of the human person and of human society? Some detailed phenomenology of human society and of science is needed to answer that one!

Towards the end of his article, Consolmagno offers some thoughts akin to Richard Feynman's observations on the mathematical nature of physical laws:

"Not only is the Universe good, and beautiful; so are the laws that control it and explain it....The equations that describe the colours of a sunrise are remarkable for being, in their own way, every bit as beautiful as the sunrise themselves."

It is possible to be rather fussy over whether or not the "laws" control the universe or the universe is controlled in accordance with those "laws", and the scientists knowledge of the "laws" represents his knowledge of the universe (if you know what I mean). Consolmagno appears looser in his use of language in this regard than Feynman would be. Like Feynman, Consolmagno recognises that science always has something more to learn, describing this as "the key and the essence of true science".

I do take rather more substantial issue with the following passage from Consolmagno's article (my emphases):

"Think of a pendulum, a weight on a swing, moving slowly back and forth. If you’re Aristotle, you see that eventually it comes to rest, hanging straight up and down, and you conclude that all things in nature seek a natural resting place. If you’re Galileo, you notice that the period of the pendulum stays constant, even as it swings less and less. If you’re Newton, you see that there are outside forces, friction in the string or in the air, that slow down the pendulum; without those external forces, there’d be nothing to stop the pendulum from swinging forever. Same pendulum: three completely different interpretations.

"Does that mean that science is not objectively true? Well... yes, to some degree. Does it mean that science is invalid? Absolutely not. For one thing, it works — if not perfectly, then good enough."

Yes, there are three different "interpretations" or understandings of the underlying physical laws; but there are also three different sets of experimental observations, each one progressing more deeply into what can be observed about a pendulum. Each set of observations enables a different and deepening understanding of the underlying physical law. It seems unfair to me to allocate the different "interpretations" to the people associated with them rather than to allocate it to reflection on the different experimental observations, that is, to consideration of the reality being studied. The suggestion that science is not objectively true then simply does not arise. Consolmagno seems to hint at this connection between the science and the reality that it studies when he uses the phrase "For one thing, it works" and continues to exemplify this in describing the working of a clock.

"And most beautiful of all is that we have been given, undeserved, the ability to understand those laws ....Another, most surprising aid we get, and the compass that directs our intuition, is this yearning for truth, for beauty, for elegance, that directs our souls and needs to be nourished in every aspect of our human lives."

Richard Feynman: part 3 1/2

Mike Gottlieb's comment on Richard Feynman Part 3set me pondering last night. My pondering came up with two things, so here they are. I feel that they do link up to each other.



First Thing

I included in Part 3 the following quotation from the end of chapter 5 of Feynman's The Character of Physical Law. I left on one side what the quotation might tell us about Feynman's views on religion.

Which end is nearer to God; if I may use a religious metaphor. Beauty and hope, or the fundamental laws? I think that the right way, of course, is to say that what we have to look at is the whole structural interconnection of the thing; and that all the sciences, and not just the sciences, but all the efforts of intellectual kinds, are an endeavour to see the connections of the hierarchies, to connect beauty to history, to connect history to man's psychology, man's psychology to the working of the brain, the brain to the neural impulse, the neural impulse to the chemistry, and so forth, up and down, both ways...And I do not think either end is nearer to God... to stand with evil and beauty and hope, or to stand with the fundamental laws, hoping that way to get a deep understanding of the whole world, with that aspect alone, is a mistake. "

Qn 1: What can we infer from this about Feynman's own religious beliefs? Ans: As Mike Gottlieb pointed out in his comment, Feynman refers to God as a "metaphor" so indicating that he does not believe in the existence of God, and this .

Qn 2: What can we infer about Feynman's attitude towards religious belief and towards those who hold religious beliefs? Ans: To be fair to Feynman, we can only be very tentative in answering this question, and should recognise that Feynman was not in this context talking to believers specifically. But in a dialogue with people of faith, a non-believer would recognise that, though he does not believe God exists at all, those he is talking to do believe that God exists as an objective reality - and not just as a "metaphor". Does the use of the term "metaphor" indicate a discourtesy towards believers?

Qn 3 (and, for me, the most perplexing question): In this passage, what exactly does Feynman use the metaphor of God to represent? Ans: A "deep understanding of the whole world", a complete understanding of the whole world? ....



Second Thing

In Richard Feynman Part 2, I included the following quote, taken from the end of chapter 1 of The Character of Physical Law, where Feynman is summarising the features of physical laws. I added my own observation that I thought the word inexact had been well chosen. It did not indicate that the laws are wrong or incorrect, rather that they are open to and need the greater precision that comes with the furtherance of scientific knowledge.

"First, it is mathematical in its expression; the others are that way too. Second, it is not exact; Einstein had to modify it, and we know it is not quite right yet, because we have still to put the quantum theory in. That is the same with all our other laws - they are not exact. There is always an edge of mystery, always a place where we have some fiddling around to do yet. This may or may not be a property of Nature, but it certainly is common to all laws as we know them today. It may be only a lack of knowledge."

It is in this context that I think we need to read Feynman's comment that "science is uncertain" as it occurs in chapter 3 of The Character of Physical Law:

"..the only utility of science is to go on and try to make guesses. So what we always do is to stick our necks out ... Of course this means that science is uncertain; the moment that you make a proposition about a region of experience that you have not directly seen then you must be uncertain... In order to avoid simply describing experiments that have been done, we have to propose laws beyond their observed range. There is nothing wrong with that, despite the fact that it makes science uncertain."

Qn 1:

Does Feynman suggest that physical laws are "inexact" or that they are "uncertain"; or does his use of the term "uncertain" equate to his use of the term "inexact"? Ans: I am willing to interpret "uncertain" here as equivalent of "inexact". Experimental observation is capable of turning the "uncertain" guess into a confirmation or otherwise of the validity of a physical law in a new region of experience, thus exploring its field of inexactitude. I also think it would be incorrect to take away from these passages a view that "all science is uncertain". It would be more correct to take away a view that some points of scientific knowledge are known with greater certainty/exactitude than others. This is primarily based on reading the two passages in the context of each other.

In other writings, Feynman seems to favour more what would be termed in every day language "uncertainty" than what would be termed "inexactitude". This is what I intend to look at in part 4 of this series, but here is a taster. It is from an essay The Value of Science which is the last chapter of Feynman's What do you care what other people think?.

"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 darn 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 recognise our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty - some unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain."

Qn 2:

Does this last passage say something different than the original quotation from The Character of Physical Law or does it say the same thing but using a different terminology? Ans: My view is that this last passage does represent a view that is less confident in the ability of the scientist to know the physical laws that nature manifests than the first. This is particularly so if we look at my First Thing Qn 3 above, which is suggesting/implying that The Character of Physical Law expresses a greater practical confidence in the knowledge gained by science.

Qn 3 (and, again, the most significant question): What does this all tell us about Feynman's view as to whether or not scientists' can really know the physical laws of nature? Ans: A full answer will have to wait until part 4, but herewith two indicators. Does Feynman's approach to the knowledge of nature prepare the ground for his atheism? Someone who considers science, which studies a nature that can be directly experienced, to be uncertain, is unlikely to be disposed to believe in God, of whom we have by and large only indirect experience. The second thing to bear in mind is that the thought expressed in The Character of Physical Law dates from 1964, while that from The Value of Science dates from a public address given in 1955, with a similar presentation in lectures given in 1963 (The Meaning of it all). There is a hermeneutical enquiry to be pursued here, both looking at the sequence in which Feynman's views were expressed and the context of the types of lectures involved. Or it might just be that The Character of Physical Law is atypical of Feynman's thought as a whole. See part 4!

Richard Feynman: part 3

In part 2, I picked up themes from the first two chapters of Richard Feynman's The Character of Physical Law. In this part, I want to look at a particular theme that occurs in the remaining chapters of that book. It is already there in what I said in part 2, but it is something that gains emphasis later in the book. It is a theme of unity in our knowledge of the world.


Chapter 3 looks at what Feynman calls "The great Conservation Principles". He looks at conservation of quantities like charge, energy, momentum and angular momentum. Feynman observes that, as far as we can tell today, what he terms the "great" conservation laws are absolutely accurate. Some others are only approximate, but are still useful. In concluding this chapter, Feynman writes (emphasis is mine):

"Discovering the laws of physics is like trying to put together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. We have all these different pieces, and today they are proliferating rapidly. Many of them are lying about and cannot be fitted with the other ones. How do we know that they belong together? How do we know that they are really all part of one as yet incomplete picture? We are not sure, and it worries us to some extent, but we get encouragement from the common characteristics of several pieces. They all show blue sky, or they are all made out of the same kind of wood. All the various physical laws obey the same conservation principles."

Towards the end of a chapter on the distinction between past and future, Feynman writes as follows:

".. an understanding of physical laws does not necessarily give you an understanding of things of significance in the world in any direct way. The details of real experience are often very far from the fundamental laws. We have a way of discussing the world, when we talk of it at various hierarchies or levels... For example, we have at one end fundamental laws of physics. Then we invent terms for concepts which are approximate, which have, we believe, their ultimate explanation in terms of the fundamental laws. For instance, 'heat'."

Feynman outlines an ascent up a continuing "hierarchy of complexity" to the features of living beings (again, emphasis is mine).

"And then we go on, and we come to words and concepts like 'man', and 'history', or 'political expediency', and so forth, a series of concepts that we use to understand things at an ever higher level. And going on, we come to things like evil, and beauty, and hope ...

"Which end is nearer to God; if I may use a religious metaphor. Beauty and hope, or the fundamental laws? I think that the right way, of course, is to say that what we have to look at is the whole structural interconnection of the thing; and that all the sciences, and not just the sciences, but all the efforts of intellectual kinds, are an endeavour to see the connections of the hierarchies, to connect beauty to history, to connect history to man's psychology, man's psychology to the working of the brain, the brain to the neural impulse, the neural impulse to the chemistry, and so forth, up and down, both ways...

"And I do not think either end is nearer to God... And to stand with evil and beauty and hope, or to stand with the fundamental laws, hoping that way to get a deep understanding of the whole world, with that aspect alone, is a mistake. It is not sensible for the ones who specialise at one end, and the ones who specialise at the other end, to have such a disregard for each other. (They don't actually, but people say they do). The great mass of workers in between, connecting one step to another, are improving all the time our understanding of the world ... and in that way we are gradually understanding this tremendous world of interconnecting hierarchies."

Leaving aside for the moment the references to God, and what these references tell us about Richard Feynman's views on religion, there is here a clear affirmation that the physical sciences alone are not able to tell us everything about the world. At the very least, the human sciences must also be engaged. The reference to such ideas as evil, beauty and hope suggests that philosophy must be involved in our search to understand the world - as well as physics.

In this context, the last two paragraphs of the whole book are interesting (emphases are again mine):

"In this age people are experiencing a delight, the tremendous delight that you get when you guess how nature will work in a new situation never seen before. From experiments and information in a certain range you can guess what is going to happen in a region where no one has ever explored before...

"What is it about nature that lets this happen, that it is possible to guess from one part what the rest is going to do? This is an unscientific question: I do not know how to answer it, and therefore I am going to give an unscientific answer. I think it is because nature has a simplicity and therefore a great beauty."

I want to suggest that, in saying that the question is "unscientific" and in giving an "unscientific answer", Feynman is recognising that the question takes him from one level in the hierarchy of connections to another. The question is a philosophical one, not one about the physical laws themselves. It therefore deserves a philosophical answer, that is, an "unscientific answer", and not an answer determined from the physical laws themselves. The descriptor "unscientific" does not imply any illegitimacy in either the question or the answer. Or at least this is what I would like to think Feynman meant to say, though I must admit to not being absolutely sure that it is what he meant.

The reference to "simplicity" and "great beauty" can be clearly related to the suggestions of a unity in the physical world indicated above.

Richard Feynman: part 2

As promised about a week ago, here is the second part of my reflection on the thought of physicist Richard Feynman. This post has been given an added relevance by the announcement during the past week of the award of the Templeton Prize to Fr Michael Heller, a Catholic priest, philosopher and physicist. Fr Heller's statement made on receiving the prize can be found on the Templeton Prize website at http://www.templetonprize.org/pdfs/heller_statement.pdf

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In Chapter 1 of his book The Character of Physical Law, Feynman presents the law of Gravitation as an example of Physical Law, and draws out from it a description of what a physical law is. At the end of the chapter, he gives a summary of his conclusions, saying that what he has presented about the law of Gravitation is also true about all other physical laws. I have added emphases to make clearer the separate points that Feynman makes:

"First, it is mathematical in its expression; the others are that way too. Second, it is not exact; Einstein had to modify it, and we know it is not quite right yet, because we have still to put the quantum theory in. That is the same with all our other laws - they are not exact. There is always an edge of mystery, always a place where we have some fiddling around to do yet. This may or may not be a property of Nature, but it certainly is common to all laws as we know them today. It may be only a lack of knowledge.

"But the most impressive fact is that gravity is simple. It is simple to state the principles completely ... It is simple, and therefore it is beautiful. ... It is complicated in its actions, but the basic pattern or system beneath the whole thing is simple. This is common to all our laws; they all turn out to be simple things, although complex in their actual actions.

"Finally comes the universality of the gravitational law, and the fact that it extends over such enormous distances that Newton, in his mind, worrying about the solar system, was able to predict what would happen in an experiment [in a laboratory]... Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organisation of the entire tapestry."

It should be noted that, when Feynman says that laws are inexact he is not saying that they are wrong or incorrect; rather he is saying that they are open to, and indeed at certain points need, the greater precision that comes with furtherance of scientific knowledge. The word inexact has been well chosen here.

In Chapter 2 of The Character of Physical Law, Feynman considers further the relationship between mathematics and physical laws. One point that Feynman makes in this chapter is that the mathematician deals just with "theory" (my choice of words here, not Feynman's) or language that is mathematics, whereas the physicist has to make a connection between "theory" or language and a "real world". Again, I include some emphases of my own, which will be referred to below:

"Mathematicians are only dealing with the structure of reasoning, and they do not really care what they are talking about. They do not even need to know what they are talking about, or, as they themselves say, whether what they say is true."

A mathematician will represent a quantity by "x", and, after that, it is not critical to him or her exactly what "x" represents.

"In other words, mathematicians prepare abstract reasoning ready to be used if you have a set of axioms about the real world. But the physicist has meaning to all his phrases....(In) physics you have to have an understanding of the connection of words with the real world. It is necessary at the end to translate what you have figured out into English, into the world, into the blocks of copper and glass that you are going to do the experiments with."

Feynman also points out the possibility that, what is the same thing in the "real world" of physics, can be expressed by different forms in the language of mathematics. So, the law of Gravitation can equally well be expressed as a formula describing the force between two objects at a distance or as a formula describing a potential field in which a number expresses a gravitational property of each point in space. These different formulations might be exactly equivalent scientifically, but Feynman suggests that they can be very different "psychologically" (Feynman's choice of word). This is because when you are trying to find out new laws, or see how the laws apply in new situations, one formulation might turn out to be much more useful to the physicist than another. He also refers to the idea of a kind of scientific intuition, or the use of models and pictures of reality, that can be used to arrive at a new physical law. These can help, he says, but the bottom line is that, the greatest discoveries then

"abstract away from the model and the model never does any good".

Feynman continues:

"This shows again that mathematics is a deep way of expressing nature, and any attempt to express nature in philosophical principles, or in seat-of-the-pants mechanical feelings, is not an efficient way."

In concluding his chapter, Feyman writes:

"To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature .... If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language [ie mathematics] that she speaks in. She offers her information only in one form; we are not so unhumble as to demand that she change before we pay any attention."

Feynman has deliberately, to use an expression I used in part 1, allowed the physics to speak for itself. However, now look at the emphases/emphases highlighted above and compare them to the philosophical expression of S L Jaki in his book Cosmos and Creator p.54:

"First, the material entities observed by science must be real, that is, existing independently of the observer ...Second, the material entities must have a coherent rationality. They must be governed by laws which can be formulated in a quantitative framework, and they must have a validity which transcends the limits of any particular time or location ...Third, those entities, because they are governed by consistent laws, must form a coherent whole, that is, must be subject to a consistent interaction ... Fourth, the form in which that coherent wholeness, or universe, does exist, cannot be considered .. a necessary from of existence. It is only one among countless others that are conceiveable. As to the question why such a universe does in fact exist, science has no answer....

"These four features of the universe are indispensable ... for making science possible."

So, I want to suggest, Feynman comes very close to offering what a philosopher might consider the necessary metaphysical conditions, that is, the necessary understanding of the way the world really is, for a self sustaining scientific enterprise just by letting the nature of the study of physics speak for itself ...

Richard Feynman: part 1

This is a post for the physicists among you, and is the first in what I am expecting will end up being a series of four. Please read all four, especially the last, if you want to get a complete picture of what I want to say about Feynman. I hope to post the four instalments at the rate of one a week.

But first, for those who are not physicists, an introduction to Richard Feynman. He was born in New York in 1918, graduated with a BSc from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1939 and completed his PhD at Princeton in 1942. He worked during the war years at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory - ie as part of the huge team of scientists and engineers assembled in the middle of nowhere to develop the atomic bomb. Most of the physicists of any note were involved in this project one way or another. Feynman was subsequently professor of theoretical physics at Cornell University and then, most famously, at California Institute of Technology (Caltech). There, beginning in 1962, he delivered a course of introductory lectures to undergraduates as part of a renewal of the physics teaching at Caltech. These lectures, published from tape recordings in three volumes as the Feynman Lectures on Physics, form the heart of his reputation as an able communicator of his science. One of his last scientific contributions was as a member of the enquiry into the Challenger shuttle disaster. Oh, and he won a Nobel prize along the way. This was in 1965, when he shared the prize for his work on quantum electrodynamics (ie the theory of how light interacts with matter, and in particular with electrons) for which he developed a novel and powerful method of calculation. [Aside for the physicists: interestingly, the idea of using probability amplitude vectors on which this method of calculation is based now appears in the teaching materials of the Advancing Physics A-level physics course here in the UK.] Feynman died in 1988.


It is probably truer to say of Feynman that he was a great communicator of physics than to say that he was a populariser of physics. A book such as QED The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, which is a collection of four lectures on quantum electrodynamics delivered/written for a non-specialist audience, is still available in paperback some 20 years after first publication. But it has never attracted the glamourous public attention given to that far, far inferior book by Stephen Hawkings, A brief history of time. I think there are two reasons for this, and they are both reasons that mean I find Feynman attractive as a writer about physics:

1. There is no compromising of the physics content, either in terms of the range of the content or in terms of the depth of treatment. There is an attempt to make it comprehensible without all the busy equations, and so make it accessible, but you can read the book and feel that you get properly to grips with the physics. This is not possible with most "popular physics" writing, and certainly not true of Hawkings, where the physics content is emasculated when compared to Feynman's writing.

2. Feynman talks/writes about the physics - without any overlay of philosophy or ideology. He lets the physics speak for itself, and lets it show its own intrinsic metaphysics/ epistemology [its "own" expression of the reality of things/its "own" expression of how we come to know things when we do physics].

To give you a flavour, here are a couple of quotations found pretty much at random from a collection of essays based on the Lectures on Physics. They appear in a book called Six Easy Pieces:

"In this chapter, we begin our more detailed study of the different aspects of physics , having finished our description of things in general." [my emphasis - note the readiness with which our ability to describe things themselves is expressed here.]

At the beginning of the next chapter:

"In this chapter we shall discuss one of the most far-reaching generalizations of the human mind. While we are admiring the human mind, we should take some time off to stand in awe of a nature that could follow with such completeness and generality such an elegantly simple principle as the law of gravitation." [Note here the very easy acceptance of a correlation between our ability to know and the reality that is known.]

The book by Feynman that I want to look at in particular is one called The Character of Physical Law, so if you want to read ahead, that is the book to start on!