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Surely We’re Not Joking, Dr. Feynman!
February 17th, 2009 @ 07:34:36 | Education, Twitter
Last night, I was happily sanitizing parts of my website and helping a dear friend with tidbits when a buddy from across the Atlantic pinged. After the usual exchange of pleasantries, he mentioned how his wife had taken a liking for Richard Feynman’s (kinda) auto-biography – Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! While the book is a wonderful read, often filled with narratives about [not so] common incidents that [can] happen to almost anybody, it sure does show that they happen to the greatest of scientists and like my teacher, Dr. Sharath Ananthamurthy, had once mentioned, it shows that even scientists have a life outside of their research labs.
Rather co-incidentally, it was around the same time that Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) tweeted about teaching. One thing led to another and being a Physics major by training & degree, I couldn’t help but re-see first of Dr. Feynman’s lectures – Photons: Corpuscles of Light [The Douglas Robb Memorial Lectures]. While what Tom tweeted was/is true to a great extent, this man – Dr. Feynman – continues to make it [the art of grasping students' attention] a God given right. And so effortlessly too.
Having once read that book myself and having had several opportunities to discuss the underlying philosophy / concepts as well as Feynman himself with several fellow grad students [Biju, Eli, Ewe Wei, Kah Chun, Mike] for many a years at Michigan Tech, it didn’t take too much to convince me to re-read the following section, The Dignified Professor, from that book. If you haven’t read it yet, you should – it will make sense irrespective of the field of your specialization 
I don’t believe I can really do without teaching. The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don’t have any ideas and I’m not getting anywhere I can say to myself, “At least I’m living; at least I’m doing something; I am making some contribution” — it’s just psychological.
When I was at Princeton in the 1940s I could see what happened to those great minds at the Institute for Advanced Study, who had been specially selected for their tremendous brains and were now given this opportunity to sit in this lovely house by the woods there, with no classes to teach, with no obligations whatsoever. These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly all by themselves, OK? So they don’t get any ideas for a while: They have every opportunity to do something, and they are not getting any ideas. I believe that in a situation like this a kind of guilt or depression worms inside of you, and you begin to worry about not getting any ideas. And nothing happens. Still no ideas come.
Nothing happens because there’s not enough real activity and challenge: You’re not in contact with the experimental guys. You don’t have to think how to answer questions from the students. Nothing!
In any thinking process there are moments when everything is going good and you’ve got wonderful ideas. Teaching is an interruption, and so it’s the greatest pain in the neck in the world. And then there are the longer period of time when not much is coming to you. You’re not getting any ideas, and if you’re doing nothing at all, it drives you nuts! You can’t even say “I’m teaching my class.”
If you’re teaching a class, you can think about the elementary things that you know very well. These things are kind of fun and delightful. It doesn’t do any harm to think them over again. Is there a better way to present them? The elementary things are easy to think about; if you can’t think of a new thought, no harm done; what you thought about it before is good enough for the class. If you do think of something new, you’re rather pleased that you have a new way of looking at it.
The questions of the students are often the source of new research. They often ask profound questions that I’ve thought about at times and then given up on, so to speak, for a while. It wouldn’t do me any harm to think about them again and see if I can go any further now. The students may not be able to see the thing I want to answer, or the subtleties I want to think about, but they remind me of a problem by asking questions in the neighborhood of that problem. It’s not so easy to remind yourself of these things.
So I find that teaching and the students keep life going, and I would never accept any position in which somebody has invented a happy situation for me where I don’t have to teach. Never.
As much teaching, science and technology as Dr. Feynman‘s work have inspired, I am sure even he wouldn’t have dreamed that some day, some dude would find a message from a long time friend and a tweet from a fellow teacher-technologist-friend inspiring to re-read his work
If he were to be alive today, could you guess what he would have tweeted?
I should say reading your blog today inspired me so much that I spent the whole day reading “Classic Feynman”.
As I have realised quite a few times before, although I may never appreciate Physics completely, I have a certain fascination for Physicists.
@Soumya,
You know, Physicists are [nice] people too. I was just wondering about your last sentence: I have a certain fascination for Physicists. Shouldn’t that be I have a fascination for certain Physicist?
PS: I know I am evil
He!He! That too.
But all of my Physicist friends are amazing people. So, I am a fan of Physicists.