A beginners guide to epistemology
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If you do not know what epistemology is and do not really want to know, but you want to be a scientist then you should read this book. It describes how a scientist thinks and what we know.
One review has said it rambles, but so do the minds of scientists. When you get a perfectly formed argument and lecture then you do not get what is really happening. You are expecting some completed finalised package. You expect an answer - the truth.
Everyday in science is a new discovery, a new wonder and you never know anything! When you present your work it looks complete, it looks convincing but a real scientist knows it is never quite there. That is the spirit of these lectures - they are not to teach they are to inspire and to give you a taste of unsanitised reality.
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Rambling
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Richard Feynman was a brilliant scientist and a great communicator/educator. However, I feel this replaying of three lectures is very weak. The first two are interesting and relatively focused, if a little dated. However, the last, occupying over half the book, rambles aimlesslessly (very atypical of anybody from such a background) and ends nowhere.
If you're a Richard Feynman fan you'll just love hearing his words, but if you're new to him try some of his other work lest you are disappointed.
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Assets not faults
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To read the previous reviews I can not contradict many of the points made, the book may repeat itself, be disjointed slightly and in places vague. But it is these aspects of the book that I would consider assets rather than faults. Feynman was not only a physicist but a great teacher and I feel that this book emphasises this.It does not purely deliver opinions, but provokes questions. A physisict must be able to formulate their own opinions rather than be force-feed views like in many other books. This is Feynman's true talent, he says enough to establish guided thought in the reader without inflicting his opinions. I therefore feel that if the reader is willing to use their mind to truely consider the points made in this book then the rewards are infinite.
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Feynman on life, the universe, and everything
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This short booklet is actually a typescript of a series of three John Danz lectures which professor Feynman delivered in April 1963 at the University of Washington. They show yet another of his many facets -- aside from the ingenious scientist, the wonderful science teacher and the hilarious storyteller -- one of an intellectual thinking of the interaction between the science and the society. The thread that can be followed throughout the series of lectures is the value of scepticism. Scepticism and doubt kept science sane for centuries. After describing what he considers the essence of science, Feynman tries to answer several questions arising at the boundary between science and the society. Is there a conflict between science and religion? Can science be applied to moral and ethical questions? How can the inspirational value of religion be preserved when the belief in God is uncertain? In the last lecture, Feynman elaborates some abuses of statistics he encountered, like mixing up the probability with the possibility, a posteriori statistical reasoning etc. The book will probably first and foremost attract Feynman devotees, who already have all the other books he has written and cannot miss one. The book also reflects some of the atmosphere of the cold war 60's, so it might be of some interest for those who either lived in that era or have some special historic interest in it. But aside from this, no collection of Feynman's papers published after his death has ever reached the mastership of books he actively prepared.
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Somewhat disjointed, but a thought-provoking read.
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This book undoubtedly suffers from not being a unified work but rather the text of a series of lectures given by Feynman; his thoughts span a wide range of areas, concentrating on the relationship between science and society and public perceptions of science. Feynman doesn't pretend to be an expert on many of the topics he addresses; the book merely outlines some of his perspectives on the world, and as such is a worthwhile read.
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