Who was Richard Feynman?

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Who was Richard Feynman?
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Stories from Genius, by Gleck

• kids look in encyclopedia
• shrink into carpet
• first presentation
• Wolfgang Pauli (45)
• Enrico Fermi (38)
• Albert Einstein (21)
• math text selection committee

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1965 Nobel prize for quantumelectrodynamics (QED)
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From Kuhn What is science?

• Constellation of facts theories and methods
  collected in current texts
• science historian must id the time, place and
  person who discovered each fact
• SH must explain myths, error and superstition of
  prior scientific eras
• myths seem to be as scientific as current fact

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From Kuhn What is science? 

• The historical integrity of science in its own
  time
• science methods are insufficient to direct all
  scientific conclusions
• observation and experience must restrict the
  range of scientific belief
• there is also and arbitrary element
• "normal science" predicated upon the belief that
  we know what the world is like
• Incommensurable 

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What is science?

• Science or Magic?
• Feynman
• a method of finding things out
• a body of knowledge
• technology new things you can do

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The contrast

• Constellation of facts theories and methods
  collected in current texts
• Judged by
• The historical integrity of science in its own
  time

• A method of finding things out
• A body of knowledge
• Technology new things you can do
• Judged by observation!

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The Method

• Principle of observation
• prove means test
• See description, later

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The body

• Earth on an elephant on a tortoise that swam in a
  bottomless sea
• What is at the edge of the universe?

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Technology

• Economists call this the product
• Is this the justification for Science?
• Feynman says no, just as Hardy defended
  mathematics

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Social World

• Includes the human element of natural sciences
• Cold hard facts?

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Social science relationships

• Describing
• Explaining
• Predicting
• Controlling

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Describing principle of observation

• observations are not the laws
• As believed in the Middle ages
• experiments are always inaccurate (spinning top,
  weight and 186,000 mph)
• experiments are incomplete
• natural excludes questions of should or
  value
• does SW include should and value?

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Consequences of observation principle

• observation cannot be rough
• science must be thorough
• But not all thorough is scientific
• interpretation can be wrong
• objectivity is required
• but not present!

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The Nature of Evidence in the Social Sciences

• Indirect
• No controlled experiments
• Stages construct hypotheses, test validity

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Explaining

• How (natural)
• and why (social)

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Predicting

• Knowledge is of no real value if all you can
  tell me is what happened yesterday (Feynman)
• rules
• The more specific, the better
• inverse square law of gravitation
• models
• theory
• yield valid and meaningful predictions about
  phenomena not yet observed (Friedman)

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Controlling

• Behavior modification
• Economic prosperity

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Uncertainty does not mean unknowing

• All scientific knowledge is uncertain.
• Doubt opens the doors to new ideas
• Doubt erases past mistakes