Doing is part of learning

I always fancy reading about what other people think because the thrill is never really about what they think about, but how they go about doing it.

The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out by Richard Feynman is a casual disclosure of the renowned scientist's inquisitiveness and a revelation of his eccentricities. As opposed to, say, Stephen Hawking, who has no choice but to perform theoretical physics in his head, Feynman puts his entire being into the investigation of puzzles.

Feynman was the embodiment of natural curiosity. He developed hunches about everyday life (such as whether it was possbile to mentally keep a steady count while running up and down stairs) and set out trying to test those beliefs empirically.

Before winning the Noble Prize in Physics in 1965 for contributions to the theory of nuclear reactions, he was scouted while still completing his PhD thesis to develop the atomic bomb (Manhattan Project) and saw through the process that culminated in the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (He was depressive after the deed.)

The series of short works are extended narratives given by Feynman in his personal inimitable style. The anecdotal quality allows his injection of self-deprecating humour into his storytelling as well.

Read this book as a guide to parenting if all science fails to interest you. Feynman always credited his father for developing his curiosity in life and maintaining a healthy distrust for any form of authority that tried to impinge its wisdom.

Feynman, after all, lived out that intellectual integrity by being the only open critic of NASA after the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion in 1986. He condemned the space race propoganda that led to underestimation of the probability for mishaps to happen. The report he wrote was almost supressed from the public (it ended up in the appendix) but it is reproduced in this book.

Wicked genius.