Product Description

A series of classic lectures, delivered in 1960 and recorded for the BBC. This is Feynman's unique take on the problems and puzzles that lie at the heart of physical theory - with Newton's Law of Gravitation; on whether time can ever go backwards; on maths as the supreme language of nature. Demonstrates Feynman's knack of finding the right everyday illustration to bring out the essence of a complicated principle - eg brilliant analogy between the law of conservation energy and the problem of drying yourself with wet towels. 'Feynman's style inspired a generation of scientists. This volume remains the best record I know of his exhilarating vision' - Paul Davies

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63547 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

About the Author
Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988) was one of this century's most brilliant theoretical physicists and original thinkers. Books by Feynman in Penguin include QED (1990 - 58,000 copies), Six Easy Pieces (1998 - 27,000 copies), and Six Not-so-Easy Pieces (1999 - 10,000 copies).

Customer Reviews

Not his best work, but interesting nonetheless
This is basically transcripts of a series of lectures given by Feynman. As such they are informal in style, but also relaxed on things such as sentence structure an punctuation. I'm not just being picky because this led to me having trouble reading some of the passages, they're not impenetrable, just not to his usual high standard.

The content however is good. I have read a few of his books and I wouldn't rate this amongst his best work. Usually he puts a new slant on ideas, presenting them in a way which gives fresh insights, but that isn't so evident here. He did introduce a couple of new concepts to me, like the equivalence of the symmetries and conservation laws, and how orbits can be described by conservation. These were entirely new though, so it wasn't like the new understanding of general relativity I gained from 'Six Not-so-Easy Pieces'. The final chapter on 'Seeking New Laws' fails to strike the right note for me, falling short of it's aims to explain where innovation comes from.

This is a book which doesn't deal directly with the laws of physics, there's plenty of those around already, some from the same author. It deals instead with the general structure of these laws, and how it is possible to have these laws in the first place. As such it is an interesting read, and should be considered if you have tired of books on relativity and quantum mechanics.

A very interesting book
This is a book that I really enjoyed because of Richard Feynman's fine writing style. He combined his scientific knowledge with his wit and it came out perfectly. I have read several of Mr. Feynman's books, but I think that this one comes out top. It explains gravity perfectly and the Chapter on Probability and Uncertainty was most interesting. I couldn't ask for more in a book!

Three Thumbs up
Can someone with freshman college physics understand Professor Feynmans theoretical physics? This cassette really combines well everything from Newton's Laws to quantum theory to Einsteinian gravity to the very mathematical (yet not too much) nature of physical law. The answer is with this two tape cassette (which I purchased and prefer) a definite yes. In spite of the fact that many of the readers aren't theoretical phyicists, this book really brings into focus "hard" physics. I bought this set hoping to benefit from Feynman's more humanistic teaching style and I was pleased with the results.

I highly recommend this read (listen).