Don't forget The Feynman Series http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRmbwczTC6E
Collection of Richard Feynman talks on the scientific method, learning, and CS
11–20 of 22 posts
Re: Collection of Richard Feynman talks on the scientific method, learning, and CS
#12I 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...
Re: Collection of Richard Feynman talks on the scientific method, learning, and CS
#13His 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.
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 interact…
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
Re: Collection of Richard Feynman talks on the scientific method, learning, and CS
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 interact…
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…
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.
Re: Collection of Richard Feynman talks on the scientific method, learning, and CS
#15http://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...
Re: Collection of Richard Feynman talks on the scientific method, learning, and CS
#16His 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.
That's funny because one of the first things my first CS professor said (paraphrased): computer science is very poorly named--it isn't a science and it isn't about computers.
Re: Collection of Richard Feynman talks on the scientific method, learning, and CS
#17Feynman'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.
I really loved the portrayal of programmers as sorcerers and programs as spells in SICP. It's a very apt metaphor.
Re: Collection of Richard Feynman talks on the scientific method, learning, and CS
#18His 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.
Computer Science as a field has evolved since then, and I doubt he would insist on the same view today. It is very common for Computer Scientists to work in close collaborations with e.g. biologists, physicists, etc. to study natural phenomena. Some branches of Computer Science, I'd agree, are more artificial (Compilers, Programming Languages, Networking, etc... ) and less directly about nature. These branches were m…
In the situation you are describing, computers are used as tools in the sciences of biology and physics. Just because something is used to aid another science does not make itself a science.
Re: Collection of Richard Feynman talks on the scientific method, learning, and CS
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Computer Science as a field has evolved since then, and I doubt he would insist on the same view today. It is very common for Computer Scientists to work in close collaborations with e.g. biologists, physicists, etc. to study natural phenomena. Some branches of Computer Science, I'd agree, are more artificial (Compilers, Programming Languages, Networking, etc... ) and less directly about nature. These branches were m…
In the situation you are describing, computers are used as tools in the sciences of biology and physics. Just because something is used to aid another science does not make itself a science.
That's false. For example, I've done some work on computational models of the visual cortex. Researchers in this area have in the past made testable predictions about the structure of the visual cortex regarding for example, distributions of synapses, types of neurons and their function, etc. All this done based on computational arguments about time/space complexity, etc. The brain is basically a computing device, it makes perfect sense that it should be analyzed as such.
Re: Collection of Richard Feynman talks on the scientific method, learning, and CS
#20I'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.
Yeah! Feynman should write some new stuff already!