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Richard Feynman - Ode on a Flower
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More clips from the Interview @ http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/archive/feynman/idp.swf
Richard Feynman on the appreciation of nature. Video is from 1981 BBC Interview. The interview is also the subject of Feynman's book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.
I have a friend who's an artist and he's some times taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say, "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree, I think. And he says, "you see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist, oh, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing." And I think he's kind of nutty.
First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me, too, I believe, although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is. But I can appreciate the beauty of a flower.
At the same time, I see much more about the flower that he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty. I mean, it's not just beauty at this dimension of one centimeter: there is also beauty at a smaller dimension, the inner structure...also the processes.
The fact that the colors in the flower are evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting -- it means that insects can see the color.
It adds a question -- does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms that are...why is it aesthetic, all kinds of interesting questions which a science knowledge only adds to the excitement and mystery and the awe of a flower.
It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.
Tags for this video: art beauty Feynman flower physicists Richard science
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IQ tests are also a failure because results are not reproducible. I have taken multiple tests and my IQ apparently oscilates between 130 and 80. Ridiculous.
Read some of his books, you'll be better.
"The scale, properly speaking, does not permit the measure of intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not super-posable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured."
"Some recent thinkers...(have claimed) that an individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity that can't be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism; we must try to demonstrate that it is founded on nothing."
Any of you ever read a mathematician's apology?
I think that, apart from QED and just generally being a legend, Richard Feynman will go down in history as being one of the first high profile people to help break the Science vs. Art barriers that have been invented.
And what's even greater, unintentionally; he just buzzed off of life. That's truly inspirational :)
Cheers
I'm not from the USA - I'm from Scotland, and I now live in London. Why on earth would I think only americans make history? Not that anyone has a monopoly on history, but we've been making history before there were even people in America (I'm talking about PEOPLE, not white European settlers).
Fair comment but things have changed since the renaissance. History evolves.
The thought of using mathematics for physics or for anything aside from aesthetics was looked down upon. Obviously the practical uses of mathematics won out, but that does not detract from the inherent beauty and joy.