Replies

(“I’ve learned to live with not knowing.” — Richard Feynman (from the Omni interview)

Yeah, Feynman had so many cool things to say about the scientific method and the philosophy of science. His 1964 Cornell physics lectures can be viewed on the Utube. Of course his diagrams concerning virtual particle interaction are timeless (1965 Nobel Prize in physics).

First, the ground rules: Assumptions, approaches, methods and conclusions in proper scientific investigation. Richard Feynman said it best, “It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked—to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated. In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.”
Cargo Cult Science

“Now I’m going to discuss how we would look for a new law. In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it (audience laughter), no, don’t laugh, that’s the truth. Then we compute the consequences of the guess, to see what, if this is right, if this law we guess is right, to see what it would imply and then we compare the computation results to nature or we say compare to experiment or experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works.”

“If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are who made the guess, or what his name is … If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”

Feynman was asked about flying saucers. Q: Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it’s impossible? Ans: “No I can’t prove it’s impossible. It’s just very unlikely;” Such a stellar answer.

-Frank