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" The ideas associated with the problems of the development of science, as far as I can see by looking around me, are not of the kind that everyone appreciates. "

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" Quarks came in a number of varieties - in fact, at first, only three were needed to explain all the hundreds of particles and the different kinds of quarks - they are called u-type, d-type, s-type. "

Richard P. Feynman

Three

First

Fact

" I don't believe in honors - it bothers me. Honors bother: honors is epaulettes; honors is uniforms. My papa brought me up this way. "

" Because the theory of quantum mechanics could explain all of chemistry and the various properties of substances, it was a tremendous success. But still there was the problem of the interaction of light and matter. "

" Because atomic behavior is so unlike ordinary experience, it is very difficult to get used to, and it appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone - both to the novice and to the experienced physicist. "

" See that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man. "

" If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, 'Oh, I forgot that bit,' then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you've figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is! "

Richard P. Feynman

Look

Book

" Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry. "

" In the Raphael Room, the secret turned out to be that only some of the paintings were made by the great master; the rest were made by students. I had liked the ones by Raphael. This was a big jab for my self-confidence in my ability to appreciate art. "

" There is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics. "

" The fact that the colors in the flower have evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; that means insects can see the colors. That adds a question: does this aesthetic sense we have also exist in lower forms of life? "

" Often one postulates that a priori, all states are equally probable. This is not true in the world as we see it. This world is not correctly described by the physics which assumes this postulate. "

" I've always been very one-sided about science, and when I was younger, I concentrated almost all my effort on it. "

" Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do not behave like waves, they do not behave like particles, they do not behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or like anything that you have ever seen. "

" What goes on inside a star is better understood than one might guess from the difficulty of having to look at a little dot of light through a telescope, because we can calculate what the atoms in the stars should do in most circumstances. "

" All the evidence, experimental and even a little theoretical, seems to indicate that it is the energy content which is involved in gravitation, and therefore, since matter and antimatter both represent positive energies, gravitation makes no distinction. "

" It always seems odd to me that the fundamental laws of physics, when discovered, can appear in so many different forms that are not apparently identical at first, but, with a little mathematical fiddling, you can show the relationship. "

" It's the way I study - to understand something by trying to work it out or, in other words, to understand something by creating it. Not creating it one hundred percent, of course; but taking a hint as to which direction to go but not remembering the details. These you work out for yourself. "

" Is science of any value? I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value. "

" Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? "

" We get the exciting result that the total energy of the universe is zero. Why this should be so is one of the great mysteries - and therefore one of the important questions of physics. After all, what would be the use of studying physics if the mysteries were not the most important things to investigate? "

" If you keep proving stuff that others have done, getting confidence, increasing the complexities of your solutions - for the fun of it - then one day you'll turn around and discover that nobody actually did that one! "

" Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate. "

" The thing that doesn't fit is the thing that's the most interesting: the part that doesn't go according to what you expected. "

" It is always good to know which ideas cannot be checked directly, but it is not necessary to remove them all. It is not true that we can pursue science completely by using only those concepts which are directly subject to experiment. "

" If you realize all the time what's kind of wonderful - that is, if we expand our experience into wilder and wilder regions of experience - every once in a while, we have these integrations when everything's pulled together into a unification, in which it turns out to be simpler than it looked before. "

" The situation in the sciences is this: A concept or an idea which cannot be measured or cannot be referred directly to experiment may or may not be useful. It need not exist in a theory. "

" I think that 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 - this attitude of uncertainty - is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire. "

" Physics has a history of synthesizing many phenomena into a few theories. "

" Atoms are very special: they like certain particular partners, certain particular directions, and so on. It is the job of physics to analyze why each one wants what it wants. "

Richard P. Feynman

Job

Why

" In any decision for action, when you have to make up your mind what to do, there is always a 'should' involved, and this cannot be worked out from, 'If I do this, what will happen?' alone. "