Non-fiction 29 Aug 2005 12:15
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
Richard P. Feynman
Actually, this is a collection of short works by Feynman, collected by Jeffrey Robbins and with a foreword by Freeman Dyson. It includes essays, interviews and public speeches given by Feynman over a number of years. One particularly interesting essay is his report to the comission investigating the 1986 Challenger accident.
Some of the works have been published before, and most include events that were mentioned (sometimes slightly differently) in other books, so the most avid reader might have seen them before. Still, the book paints an accurate image of Feynman: happy, enthusiastic and hungry for real science, and always interested in finding his own way of doing things.
It’s a book about the pleasure of learning and of doing science; not necessarily in an “officially approved” way, but in any way you can. You can feel his enthusiasm in the transcription of some of his speeches, in the way he calls young people to action, and in the way he talks about how his father inspired the love for science in him (there’s a good lesson for parents in there, as well).
It is a mixed bag, as most collections are; but there are some gems that make reading it worthwhile.
