Feynman: Magnets FUN TO IMAGINE 4 But see NEW UPDATED file at https://tinyurl.com/ycphc432

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DevX101 · 2010-11 · Strong recommendation

Of anyone I've read or seen (in person or from videos), Feynman has the best fundamental grasp of meta-knowledge. By meta-knowledge, for lack of a better term, I mean understanding what it means to know something. mhartl has already posted this excellent video: [VIDEO] , where he explains what the word "why" means in scientific inquiry. When we answer a "why" question, we don't really explain a concept in its entirety. At best, we're able to remove a layer of skin off the onion, but no one has ever really reached the center. I suppose science at it's heart is really just the elucidation of intermediate cause and effect scenarios. For the question "why did the ball fall?", "Jimmy dropped it" is a perfectly valid answer. So is "Jimmy's motor neurons passed an action potential threshold, causing the muscles in his wrist to contract". So is "the ball moved along the curvature of space caused by the earth". How far do we go?

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jliechti1 · 2014-01 · Recommendation

Sometimes it's not always possible to explain something in sufficient detail to someone who has no concept of what you are trying to explain. Feynman explains this really well when trying to answer a question about magnets: "Of course, it's an excellent question. But the problem, you see, when you ask why something happens, how does a person answer why something happens? For example, Aunt Minnie is in the hospital. Why? Because she went out, slipped on the ice, and broke her hip. That satisfies people. It satisfies, but it wouldn't satisfy someone who came from another planet and who knew nothing about why when you break your hip do you go to the hospital... when you explain a why, you have to be in some framework that you allow something to be true. Otherwise, you're perpetually asking why." "I can't explain that attraction in terms of anything else that's familiar to you. For example, if we said the magnets attract like if rubber bands, I would be cheating you. Because they're not connected by rubber bands. I'd soon be in trouble. And secondly, if you were curious enough, you'd ask me why rubber bands tend to pull back together again, and I would end up explaining that in terms of electrical forces, which are the very things that I'm trying to use the rubber bands to explain. So I have cheated very badly, you see." The key quote being: "I really can't do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else you're more familiar with, because I don't u

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mhartl · 2010-11 · Recommendation

For those who think this doesn't sound at least a little bit like Feynman, I highly recommend this video: [VIDEO]

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