The joy of knowing (The pleasure of finding things out) - 1

This book is composed of Feynman's speeches at various events, often in front of students or other academics. Some of these speeches have not been published before, so I read the book with great interest. Unlike "You're kidding, Mr. Feynman," which I'm talking about. told In the past, this book presupposes thoughtful reading, the reader’s interest in science and a scientific approach to understanding the world around him, as well as a willingness to question everything:)

Now a little about the content of the book.

1. The joy of knowing things The article that gave the title to the entire book. In it, we see how Richard's approach to cognition was shaped by his father, who did not teach terms or theories, but taught to observe and see the essence and relationships. I especially liked the cognition through the analogy of aka "Tyrannosaurus in the window." (Look at this topic, I recommend.The Big Book of Analogies") And an algebra parsing for a practical person, where Richard talks about the instructions from school about solving problems as "a whole set of steps by which you can get an answer if you don't understand what you're trying to do." The rest of the article is also very interesting, not for nothing it is the first in the book.
2. Computers of the future In this article, Richard is a visionary and talks about parallel computers and their miniaturization. Quite interestingly discussed the issue of reversible and irreversible calculations and the relationship of the speed of calculations with energy consumption. All this is not considered from the standpoint of technical capabilities almost forty years ago. (lecture 1985 year)but rather in terms of conceptual possibilities and that this vision does not contradict existing physical laws.
3. Los Alamos - a look from the bottom This is a story about the days of Feynman in Los Alamos and participation in the Manhattan Project. In principle, all this was discussed in the already mentioned book "You, of course, are joking..."
4. What is and should be the role of scientific culture in society Here Richard talks about the scientific approach, hypotheses and theories, their usefulness and falsifiability. He believes that the life of society must follow a path similar to the scientific one – “always leave room for doubt, debate” and that “the time will come when people will fully realize that the power of power is limited, that governments are not empowered to decide whether scientific theory is valuable or not.” They should not assume the right to choose between different versions of history, economic theory, or philosophy.
5. There's so much room in the depths. - 1959 In Caltech, Feynman talked about nanotechnology, which was a visionary talk where he talked about: storing information, analogue photolithography, aligning atoms to create new materials. In the end, he staged a competition for miniaturization, which eventually turned into Feynman Prize for Nanotechnology n
6. The value of science Lecture for young scientists that they are responsible for the future of civilization
7. Richard Feynman's dissenting opinion on the Challenger Space Shuttle investigation - Speaking of it, Richard was involved in writing the postmortem on the Challenger incident, but they didn't want to take his opinion into account in the official report, so he wrote his "special opinion" and got it included in the official report. (annexed)

P.S. Continuation of the review in next post.

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