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> LA NATURE DE LA PHYSIQUE, de Richard Feynman. — Quelle est la nature du savoir qu’élaborent les sciences physiques ? Quelle est la nature du monde qu’elles nous découvrent ? C’est à cette double interrogation que répond, dans un style inimitable, l’un des plus grands physiciens de notre temps.
Panorama du développement des sciences physiques et méditation sur leur caractère, la Nature des lois physiques, ici réédité, traite aussi bien de la physique classique que de la plus récente.
S’y ajoutent deux conférences et un entretien inédits en français, où R. Feynman développe une conception stimulante du rôle éducatif et culturel de la science, et des problèmes de sa diffusion. Ed. Le Seuil, 1980.
—Revue Française de Yoga, (15), Janvier 1997

"The Character of Physical Law" by Richard Feynman is an excellent explanation of how Physics works and what it does. It is told simply enough that anyone who did well in high school can understand 95% of it. Feynman has a great talent for making things as simple as possible. He uses a few well-chosen concrete examples to demonstrate more general principles (such as conservation), illustrate methods of making discoveries, and show how Physics is related to Mathematics.

Recommended for anyone with the slightest interest in Physics and should be read by every intelligent person who believes science is a collection of facts, rather than a process of making ever better guesses about nature.

Feynman shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics. ( )

How delightful is Nature for Feynman and his peers. This glimpse on the Physicist method (more than the actual explanations of some laws) is a great takeaway. I already feel the approach, both in technic and in philosophy, can be applied to any kind of intellectual work.

This book is a transcript, hence it is sometimes hard to process. The videos can be seen online, that’s a great experience overall. Also it makes reading with Feynman accent in mind mandatory from now on :) ( )

This is a fantastic little book for which we have to thank the BBC: They decided to film these lectures and subsequently publish transcripts of them, at a time before Feynman had turned into a one-man industry and every one of Feynman`s students`first-draft lecture notes became as diamond dust.

The title tells one enough about the contents; if you have any interest in the topic you should read this book. It is almost but not completely non-mathematical. If you can cope with the algebra contained within F=GMm/R - well, that's as hard as it gets.

The aspect of the book that particularly interested me this time around is in Chapter two (and reprised somewhat in the final lecture). Feynman takes the above given equation, which expresses Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation and says - that's all very well, but you can express it in another way that's to do with how something called a potential varies locally - and if you do it will always give exactly the same answer! And, not content with that, you can express it another way that is to do with finding the minimum of a certain thing called the Action. (Technically it doesn't have to be a minimum, just somewhere where the tangent to the graph of the Action would be horizontal.) Done this way, the answers always come out the same as the other two ways! What's the point of that? Three ways to say the same thing!

But here's the interesting, indeed profound thing: when it came to understanding quantum mechanics (which doesn't deal with gravity) it was found that both potentials and a principle of minimum (stationary, strictly) Action were needed. So the different ways of expressing Newton's gravity law turned out profoundly useful in understanding a different set of phenomena, namely the nuclear forces and electromagnetism.

So if you are involved in trying to understand fundamental physics it would probably be healthy to actively search for different mathematical methods of expressing the laws as we understand them now!

Incidently, I doubt you will ever come across a more accessible introduction to the essential mystery of quantum mechanics (the photon/electron double slit experiment) than that given in this lecture, in which Feynman gave his famous quote, "...I think I can safely say nobody understands quantum mechanics." ( )

- Simple, which is good
- Fundamental, which is great
- Entertaining, who doesn't like that?

A casual stroll past the vast edifices of simple physical laws, a few views of strange ideas that haven't been accepted but interesting all the same, and terminating at his - Richard's - favourite 'twin split' experiment that we all remember from our school days.

This is a great little book. More, such an approach - clearly stating background ideas and how they were arrived at, concluding at the vanguard - could and should be applied to more topics. ( )