I remember watching these for my JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) of India
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1961-1964)
61–70 of 156 posts
Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1961-1964)
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel uncomfortable labelling nebulae as collection of stars. The more appropriate term is stellar nursery if you want to allude to their role in star formation. They themselves are just clouds of gas and dust where protostars have begun to form. Stellar clusters are what you would call a collection of stars. Also on the note of cosmology and astrophysics being strikingly young fields, I think that's fair statement…
Sorry, yes, there’s a terminological disconnect here: M31, say, is the “Andromeda Galaxy” to us, but the “Andromeda Nebula” to Hubble’s contemporaries circa 1920. The recognition that at least some of the cloudy (nebulous, literally) stuff in the sky is galaxies (and that the universe fits more than one) was the very point of the fight I mentioned. The world before it was thought to be drastically smaller in a way th…
That's right. Historically, nebula was anything that looked cloudy, so a lot of astrophysical objects that we now understand are distinct, were simply labelled as nebulous. M31, as you said, being a great example.
Modern astrophysics still carries the baggage of obsolete terminology to this day, from names of objects to names of units.
Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1961-1964)
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> misogynistic behaviors were cultural at the time, I agree they're abhorrent but people are embedded in their culture. The same is said of Hitchcock, (as an example) and his behaviour was unacceptable by todays standards. We've come some way from that but still a way to go. The video actually addresses this very point in the first few minutes: > the second component of the Feynman lifestyle that the Feynman bro has…
I do not think Feynman was celebrating his activity in the book. From memory, he learnt the behaviour from other bar flies at the bars he hung out. And he expressed his surprise at how some women reacted. This was far from his upbringing and his experience with his fiancee. The behaviour is hardly laudable, but "celebrated" it is not.
> I do not think Feynman was celebrating his activity in the book.
The argument presented in the video about this is that these are the stories Feynman edited and reworked over time, and shared with his friend Ralph Leighton, who then recorded them in the "Surely You're Joking" book.
The video also describes a change in his behavior later in life. In 1974, responding to a letter asking to reprint "What is Science?"[1] from 1966, he comments that "some of the remarks about the female mind might not be taken in the light spirit they were meant"[2]. This is cited in the video as Feynman becoming more progressive between 1966 and 1974. The "Surely" book is published in 1985, and yet still includes the misogynistic stories. The video's complaint is that there should be some contextualization about views changing, like was given in Feynman's reply in 1974, but there being none it comes across as an implicit endorsement. I don't recall from the video if Feynman reviewed or edited the "Surely" book, which leaves it as Ralph Leighton's perspective more than Feynman's.
It seems a legitimate criticism that this book held up as an example of a good role model in physics doesn't try to avoid perpetuating bad stereotypes. It's probably egregious to say the mere inclusion of the stories celebrates their actions. But it's equally egregious to fail to even try to address the bad behavior, especially when it's held out as a positive example.
[1] https://feynman.com/science/what-is-science/
[2] https://archive.org/details/perfectly-reasonable-deviations-...
Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1961-1964)
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand not watching a 3 hour video before leaving a comment, but this is a disrespectful reaction to a very well thought out video by a professional physicist giving a nuanced opinion about Feynman's legacy. She acknowledges many times in the video that Feynman was a great physicist who deserved his Nobel prize. The central topic of the video is dissecting his public image and the many books published under his…
misogynistic behaviors were cultural at the time, I agree they're abhorrent but people are embedded in their culture. The same is said of Hitchcock, (as an example) and his behaviour was unacceptable by todays standards. We've come some way from that but still a way to go. From the about the authors in the OP's link "Feynman was a remarkably effective educator. Of all his numerous awards, he was especially proud of t…
> misogynistic behaviors were cultural at the time, I agree they're abhorrent but people are embedded in their culture.
Moral relativism is a thing, but I think a more useful way to think of it rather than just saying "misogyny was a thing back then, should we care he was a misogynist then?" is to ask "if he were to have lived and worked in the 2000s, would he associate with Epstein?" And to be honest… Feynman does strike me as the kind of person to have the intellect to attract Epstein's attention and also the, for lack of a better term, party attitude to go to a couple of Epstein's parties that would result in him having awkward press releases trying to explain that he just had no possible idea that Epstein was doing anything sexual with children and conveniently forgetting all the times he was on the private island for some party or another...
That's the real strong vibe I get from Surely You're Joking. He's the kind of person who wants to be seen as someone who gets up to wacky hijinks, to be seen as "cool," and he specifically interprets "cool" in a way that's misogynistic even at a time (when he was dictating the stories that led to Surely You're Joking) when misogyny was starting to become a professional hindrance.
(And one of the things that really worries me about Surely You're Joking is that it's often recommended as a sort of "look at the wacky hijinks you can get up to as a physicist," so recommending the book is a valorization of his wacky hijinks and... well, that's ultimately what Angela's video is about, that's a thing we need to stop doing.)
Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1961-1964)
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Feynman is indeed often quoted among the first people to propose the idea of a quantum computer! This talk he gave in ‘81 is among the earliest discussion of why a quantum universe requires a quantum computer to be simulated [1]: > Can a quantum system be probabilisticaUy simulated by a classical (probabilistic, I'd assume) universal computer? In other words, a computer which will give the same probabilities as the q…
Are there Feynmans today making predictions which we scoff at.
indeed there are.
Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1961-1964)
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you listen to the taped Feynman lectures, yes Feynman did write them. The published versions were edited from transcripts. https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/recordings.html
Be forewarned. There's a new YouTube channel with an AI Feynman delivering slop.
This was really frustrating me. YT started recommending this channel and I could recognize the voice as an AI impersonation but had no way to know if it was at least reading something really written by Feynman. Eventually I concluded it wasn't, but there wasn't clear criteria under which I could report the channel. I'm not sure it's even against YT's TOS.
Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1961-1964)
#67"the sham legacy of Richard Feynman" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKpj2ISQAc
Let's be clear about this video; the "sham legacy" is the commercialization/exploitation of Feynman's legacy after he died. Feynman was not a charlatan. Collier doesn't claim he is. She talks about the very real contributions he made. Her criticism is largely about the way people scraped together any scrap of paper he had jotted down a note on and turned it into a thin book, "Feynman on XYZ topic".
But yes, he does catch criticism for his very real character flaws, his grandiosity, his philandering and inappropriate workplace behavior, and his physical abuse of his wife.
He was a complicated person. Much of the work discussing him is hagiography. This essay is even keeled but does not gloss over his flaws. Again, she discusses his very real contributions and legacy. It's a long essay; she makes time for the complexity of Feynman as a person.
If all you want to hear about Feynman is charming stories about Tuvan throat singing, you won't enjoy this essay. That's okay; it's not for everyone. There's an instinct to reject a critical work like this on it's face. I think that does a disservice, not only to Collier, but to us as students of history.
Collier is a working astrophysicist who spent months on this project. It is not a low effort hit piece. It's a critical but fair portrait from someone qualified to engage with the subject matter. I encourage everyone to withhold judgement until watching the entire essay. If you haven't seen it, you probably shouldn't make a knee jerk dismissal.
Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1961-1964)
#68"the sham legacy of Richard Feynman" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKpj2ISQAc
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Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1961-1964)
#69"the sham legacy of Richard Feynman" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKpj2ISQAc
Some people are (understandably) upset at the title of the video. I will summarize some of the main interesting beats in the video for those who don't want to watch this 3 hour masterpiece.
(1) The stories in "Surely you are joking Mr. Feynman" portray Feynman in a mean-spirited, sometimes sexist light. (2) These books were not actually written by Mr. Feynman. They were actually written by Ralph Laden. (3) Upon further reflection, almost all the stories are either made up or greatly exaggarated. Presumably, Feynman spent a lot of time telling and retelling these stories (4) Also, Ralph Laden is Bob Laden's son. Supposedly, Bob Laden is also a famous physicist. But Ralph never really mentions him