The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

89 Pages·2005·0.83 MB·English

by  Richard P. Feynman

THE MEANING OF IT ALL
Also by Richard P. Feynman
The Character of Physical Law
Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics:
The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures (with Steven Weinberg)
Feynman Lectures on Computation
(edited by Anthony J. G. Hey and Robin Allen)
Feynman Lectures on Gravitation (with Fernando B. Morinigo
and William G. Wagner; edited by Brian Hatfield)
The Feynman Lectures on Physics
(with Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands)
Photo-Hadron Interactions
Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track:
The Letters of Richard P. Feynman
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out:
The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals (with A. R. Hibbs)
Six Easy Pieces:
Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
Six Not-So-Easy Pieces:
Einstein’s Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time
Statistical Mechanics: A Set of Lectures
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Adventures of a Curious Character (with Ralph Leighton)
The Theory of Fundamental Processes
What Do You Care What Other People Think?
Further Adventures of a Curious Character
(with Ralph Leighton)
THE MEANING
OF IT ALL
Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN
A MEMBER OF THE PERSEUS BOOKS GROUP
NEW YORK
Copyright © 1998 by Michelle Feynman and Carl Feynman
Originally published by Perseus Publishing
Published by Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group
All rights reserved. Published simultaneously in Canada. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
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8810.
A CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 0-465-02394-0
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CONTENTS
Publisher’s Note
The Uncertainty of Science
The Uncertainty of Values
This Unscientific Age
Index
About Richard Feynman
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
In April 1963, Richard P. Feynman was invited to give a three-night series of
lectures at the University of Washington (Seattle) as part of the John Danz
Lecture Series. Here is Feynman the man revealing, as only he could, his
musings on society, on the conflict between science and religion, on peace and
war, on our universal fascination with flying saucers, on faith healing and
telepathy, on people’s distrust of politicians—indeed on all the concerns of the
modern citizen-scientist.
It is our great honor to share these illuminating lectures, published here for
the first time.