The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

by Richard P. Feynman

I’d be delighted to study it and find out all about it, because I can guarantee you it would be very interesting. I don’t know anything, but I do know that everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough.

Of course, I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. . . . You see?

Most people believe so many wonderful things that I decided to investigate why

Then I became over-whelmed. I didn’t realize how much there was.

I found things that even more people believe,

Another example is how to treat criminals. We obviously have made no progress–lots of theory, but no progress–in decreasing the amount of crime by the method that we use to handle criminals.

we really ought to look into theories that don’t work, and science that isn’t science.

the efficacy of various forms of psychotherapy.

kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty–a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid–not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked–to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

it’s this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in Cargo Cult Science.

A great deal of their difficulty is, of course, the difficulty of the subject and the inapplicability of the scientific method to the subject. Nevertheless, it should be remarked that this is not the only difficulty. That’s why the planes don’t land–but they don’t land.

We’ve learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don’t have that kind of a disease. But this long history of learning how to not fool ourselves–of having utter scientific integrity–is, I’m sorry to say, something that we haven’t specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you’ve caught on by osmosis.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself–and you are the easiest person to fool.

So I wish to you–I have no more time, so I have just one wish for you–the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.

what goes on in different people’s heads when they think they’re doing the same thing–something as simple as counting–is different for different people.

Professor Wheeler

Today, he has mixed emotions about the work he did toward making the atomic bomb possible. Had he done the right thing or the wrong thing?

I don’t think that I was wrong exactly at the time I made the decision. I thought about it and I think correctly that it was very dangerous if the Nazis got it. There was, however, I think, an error in my thought in that after the Germans were defeated–that was much later, three or four years later–we were working very hard. I didn’t stop; I didn’t even consider that the motive for originally doing it was no longer there.

if you have some reason for doing something that’s very strong and you start working at it, you must look around every once in a while and find out if the original motives are still right.

a little knowledge is dangerous; this young man has learned a little bit and thinks he knows it all, but soon he will grow out of this sophomoric sophistication

I do not believe that science can disprove the existence of God; I think that is impossible. And if it is impossible, is not a belief in science and in a God–an ordinary God of religion–a consistent possibility?

For the student, when he learns about science, there are two sources of difficulty in trying to weld science and religion together.

The first source of difficulty is this–that it is imperative in science to doubt; it is absolutely necessary, for progress in science, to have uncertainty as a fundamental part of your inner nature.

when we know that we actually do live in uncertainty, then we ought to admit it; it is of great value to realize that we do not know the answers to different questions.

this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire. It becomes a habit of thought. Once acquired, one cannot retreat from it anymore.

the question changes a little bit from “Is there a God?” to “How sure is it that there is a God?” This very subtle change is a great stroke and represents a parting of the ways between science and religion. I do not believe a real scientist can ever believe in the same way again. Although there are scientists who believe in God, I do not believe that they think of God in the same way as religious people do. If they are consistent with their science, I think that they say something like this to themselves: “I am almost certain there is a God. The doubt is very small.” That is quite different from saying, “I know that there is a God.”

I do not believe that a scientist can ever obtain that view–that really religious understanding, that real knowledge that there is a God–that absolute certainty which religious people have.

this process of doubt does not always start by attacking the question of the existence of God. Usually special tenets, such as the question of an afterlife, or details of the religious doctrine, such a...

the second difficulty our student has in trying to weld science and religion: Why does it often end up that the belief in God–at least, the God of the religious type–is considered to be very unreasonable, very unlikely?

the answer has to do with the scientific things–the facts or partial facts–that the man learns.

the size of the universe is very impressive, with us on a tiny particle whirling around the sun, among a hundred thousand million suns in this ...

they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged simply as a stage for God to watch man’s struggle for good and evil seems to be inadequate.

at first perhaps the student may decide that a few little things were wrong, but he often reverses his opinion later, and ends with no fundamentally different moral view.

The spirit of uncertainty in science is an attitude toward the metaphysical questions that is quite different from the certainty and faith that is demanded in religion.

I don’t believe that a real conflict with science will arise in the ethical aspect, because I believe that moral questions are outside of the scientific realm.

science can be defined as a method for, and a body of information obtained by, trying to answer only questions which can be put into the form: If I do this, what will happen? The technique of it, fundamentally, is: Try it and see. Then you put together a large amount of information from such experiences.

Should I do this?),

is not a question that you can answer only by knowing what happens; you still have to judge what happens–in a moral way.

Turning to the third aspect of religion–the inspirational aspect–brings me to the central question that I would like to present to this imaginary panel. The source of inspiration today–for strength and for comfort–in any religion is very closely knit with the metaphysical aspect; that is, the inspiration comes from working for God, for obeying his will, feeling one with God.

central problem–the problem of maintaining the real value of religion, as a source of strength and of courage to most men, while, at the same time, not requiring an absolute faith in the metaphysical aspects.