FREE THE MEANING OF IT ALL: THOUGHTS OF A CITIZEN-SCIENTIST PDF Richard P. Feynman | 144 pages | 06 Apr 2005 | The Perseus Books Group | 9780465023943 | English | New York, United States The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist by Richard P. Feynman Sign in with Facebook Sign in options. Join Goodreads. Want to Read saving…. Want to The Meaning of it All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist Currently Reading Read. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. If they are used in such a way that no sharp conclusions can be drawn. It is a very interesting kind of imagination, unlike that of the artist. The great difficulty is in trying to imagine something that you have never seen, that is consistent in every detail with what has already been seen, and that is different from what has been thought of; furthermore, it must be definite and not a vague proposition. That is indeed difficult. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value. When this objective view is finally attained, and the mystery and majesty of matter are fully appreciated, to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to view life as part of this universal mystery of greatest depth, is to sense an experience which is very rare, and very exciting. It usually ends in laughter and a delight in the futility of trying to understand what this atom in the universe is, this thing—atoms with curiosity—that looks at itself and wonders why it The Meaning of it All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist. Well, these scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate. Some will tell me that I have just described a religious experience. Very well, you may call it what you will. Then, in that language I would say that the young man's religious experience is of such a kind that he finds the religion of his church inadequate to describe, to encompass that kind of experience. The God of the church isn't big enough. I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing. That is easy. How you get to know is what I want to know. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true. In the temple a man said, "I am going to tell you something that you will never forget. The same key opens the gates of hell. In talking about the impact of ideas in one field on ideas in another field, one is always apt to make a fool of oneself. In these days of specialization there are too few people who have such a deep understanding of two departments of our The Meaning of it All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist that they do not make fools of themselves in one or the other. And in most places in the universe today there probably is nothing alive. If there is an exception to any rule, and if it can be proved by observation, that rule is wrong. One is the scientific spirit of adventure—the adventure into the unknown, an unknown that must be recognized as unknown in order to be explored, the demand that the unanswerable mysteries of the universe remain unanswered, the attitude that all is uncertain. To summarize it: humility of the intellect. So this is a good theory, is it not? It is nowhere near as good as the proposition that the planets move around the sun under the influence of a central force which varies exactly inversely as the square of the distance from the center. The second theory is better because it is so specific; it is so obviously unlikely to The Meaning of it All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist the result of chance. These two heritages are logically, thoroughly consistent. But it turns out that falsehood and evil can be taught as easily as good. I wish, therefore, to destroy any image of authority that has previously been generated. And the result of this is that political promises can never be kept. It is a mechanical fact; it is impossible. The result of that is that nobody believes campaign promises. And the result of that is a general disparaging of politics, a The Meaning of it All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist lack of respect for the people who are trying to solve The Meaning of it All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist, and so forth. Not only that, it gives inspiration to the arts and to many other activities of human beings. It is necessary to tell what will happen tomorrow if you do something—not only necessary, but fun. Only you must be willing to stick your neck out. Welcome back. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. [PDF] [EPUB] The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist Download It is a collection of three previously unpublished public lectures given by Feynman in Several paperback and audiobook editions of the book have subsequently been published. The Meaning of It All is non-technical book in which Feynman investigates the relationship between science and society. The three lectures were not published at the time, because, despite requests by the University of Washington PressFeynman did not want them The Meaning of it All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist be printed. Apart from numerous scientific papers, Feynman also published The Feynman Lectures on Physics inwhich was based on lectures he had given to undergraduate students between and In the first lecture, "The Uncertainty of Science" Feynman explains the nature of science, that it is a "method for finding things out", and that it is "based on the principle that observation is the judge of whether something is so or not". Feynman also emphasizes the distinction between questions that science can answer: "what will happen", and questions science cannot answer: "what do I want to happen". The second lecture, "The Uncertainty of Values" deals with his views on the relationship between science, religion and politics. Feynman acknowledges science's limitations and says that it does not have the value system that religions have, but adds that it can be used to help in making decisions. In the third lecture, "This Unscientific Age", the longest of the three, Feynman discusses his views on modern society and how unscientific it is. Using a number of anecdotes as examples, he covers a range of topics, including " faith healingflying saucerspolitics, psychic phenomenaTV commercials, and desert real estate ". The Meaning of It All was generally well received by reviewers, although some said that the The Meaning of it All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist did not translate into print very well and complained about the awkward sentence constructions in places resulting from the transcription from the audio recordings. In The Guardian Nicholas Lezard wrote that The Meaning of It All has almost no science in it, and that Feynman, two years before winning the Nobel Prize in Physicsgave these lectures to a non-specialist audience and spoke of "the principles of scientific methodology as if he was making a good wedding speech". Nick Meyer wrote in the New York magazine that Feynman departs from his field of theoretical physics and "waxes philosophical" on "the strengths and limitations of scientific thought", using topics like "poverty, religion, and flying saucers" to illustrate his arguments. Timothy Ferris writing in The New York Times was generally impressed with the first two lectures, but felt that Feynman's "ad-lib approach" faltered in the third. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved February 14, Open Library. May 5, Retrieved February 3, American Humanist Association. The Yale Review of Books. Retrieved February 11, American Scientist. Retrieved February 18, November First Things. The New York Review of Books. Retrieved February 15, The Guardian. New York. Feynman Wasn't Joking". The New York Times. Philosophy portal Books portal. Richard Feynman. Hidden categories: Articles with short description The Meaning of it All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist description is different from Wikidata Use mdy dates from February Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Download as PDF Printable version. Svenska Edit links. First The Meaning of it All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist cover. Wikiquote has quotations related to: Richard Feynman. The Meaning Of It All: Thoughts Of A Citizen-Scientist By Richard P Feynman | eBay Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Many appreciate Richard P. Feynman's contributions to twentieth-century physics, but few realize how engaged he was with the world around him -- how deeply and thoughtfully he considered the religious, political, and social issues The Meaning of it All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist his day.