Feynman's Hughes Lectures: 950 pages of notes(thehugheslectures.info) |
Feynman's Hughes Lectures: 950 pages of notes(thehugheslectures.info) |
For example, the Electricity and Magnetism book by Purcell is phenomenal but it is hardly ever mentioned. To quote wikipedia,
Electricity and Magnetism is a standard textbook in electromagnetism originally written by Nobel laureate Edward Mills Purcell in 1963. Along with David Griffiths' Introduction to Electrodynamics, this book is one of the most widely adopted undergraduate textbooks in electromagnetism. A Sputnik-era project funded by the National Science Foundation grant, the book is influential for its use of relativity in the presentation of the subject at the undergraduate level. In 1999, it was noted by Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. that the book was widely adopted and has many foreign translations.
Something mysterious is going on here.
When I was a physics student the best students seemed to use both types of materials simultaneously. A work like Feynmans would give a bigger picture and more intuitive understanding of what is going on and help you not miss the forest for the trees so to speak, the regular textbooks will teach you all of the little details and math tricks you need to actually solve difficult problems with these concepts.
I think explainers like Neil deGrasse Tyson have a job harder than people imagine. Historically the problem with science education has been, that, as the conceptual universe gets bigger and complicated there's a tendency to assume the common person is too stupid and beneath the subject to understand it.
To simplify and demystify science to a point to get people interested in it as a intuitive iterative process helps a lot in increasing participation of the general crowd.
With that in mind, I think we'll agree it's not relevant here, as these seem to be handwritten notes by Feynman himself.
Her criticism is purely about the man, not Feynman as a physicist, a thinker, or a teacher. Feynman was probably on the spectrum and he had a lot of problematic behaviors. That doesn't meaningfully alter the core of his legacy.
It's also not terribly insightful to point out that a great figure from history was deeply flawed. If anything, that's so common as to be nearly guaranteed.
I bought the audio book version on CD about 25 years ago.
Now it is on various sites and youtube.
https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/flptapes.html
This is a video of him giving the lecture.
Feynman's Lectures on Physics - The Law of Gravitation
Especially as a beginner it’s possible to read along with the Feynman Lectures and think you’re getting it, without really getting very much.
Another way you may hear this same point: “only Feynman could get away with doing things in this crazy unrigorous way. You better do things normal and check obsessively, and understand the normal approach very clearly before you do anything weird.” That’s mostly fair but it’s incomplete. Feynman also checked the living shit out of everything he wrote. He just doesn’t show all the checking, so he appears to be fast and loose.
Digestible lectures from a charismatic man (who made the television circuit pretty often) have a different audience than comprehensive textbooks I would think.
If one would really be interested in classical music or philosophy one would sure not miss the (other) giants in the field instead of concentrating on just one or two.
There's the mistery.
I never found anybody taking about Greiner, and at this point, I'm way too afraid to ask why.
Edit: to be fair though, textbooks are written while lectures are oral. So its hard to compare them.
Richard Feynman is a person well worth remembering, but I'm sure many of his contemporaries that get talked about less were as well.
So it goes.
2) He got his Nobel price in peak boomer years 1965 and then didn't die until the end of the 80s. For boomers he is "their" generation's physicist just like the WWII gen had Einstein as "their" physicist. Who is "the" popular science fad physicist for the X-ers and younger? Hawking, maybe Susskind, possibly even Sabine, I guess?
3) IMHO he was an autodidact who wrote for fellow autodidacts. That is my learning style. His style REALLY STRONGLY resonates with me and my learning style. If you're capable of self-teaching you get a feel for who's your type of author and who is not. Feynman definitely writes books for people like me. His books and notes are all old, of course, which is sad. As for "moderns" who emit similar intense autodidact vibes, I'd suggest Schroeder and his famous "Introduction to Thermal Physics" from the turn of the century. I subjectively like that book. I don't care if there's a better way to learn bachelors thermodynamics by taking a course in a classroom or watching video lecture, I just like the book's style. Not the superficial style like typography but the organization and connectivity of the topics is very autodidactical, just like Feynman's books. To some extent, he's post-education in that once you are done officially learning, the rest of your life you're an autodidact, like it or not, and Feynman's style leans into that. I still remember as a kid in high school, where I took two years of public high school physics, paging thru a copy of Feynman's lectures in the library and it was so clear and so fascinating compared to my experience in "official classes with new textbooks".
The normal Feynman lectures are here: https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/
A textbook that just plainly presents the facts about a specific phenomenon isn't necessarily training you to think like a theorist, in the way Feynman is.
It's been a while since I read "Surely, you must be joking" but I seem to recall Feynman himself makes the same point. He basically says something to the effect that some of his stories and bon mots are things he wished he said or did rather than stuff that actually happened.
there are books from the 19 century written by people with much better values
> The word "prig" isn't very common now, but if you look up the definition, it will sound familiar.