Product Description

What is science and what is its true value? Can a scientist believe in God? Why, in this supposedly scientific age, is there such widespread fascination with flying saucers, faith healing, astrology and alien invasion? Can there be such a thing as a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance? At the peak of his career, maverick genius Richard Feynman gave three public lectures addressing the questions that most inspired and troubled him. Covering everything from the atomic bomb to ethics, the imagination to the meaning of life, they are brought together in this provocative and hugely entertaining volume.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32609 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist collects three previously unpublished lectures by Richard Feynman, who is probably the greatest populariser of physics in this century. There is plenty of scientific illumination here for the general reader, and more remarkably, some fantastic ruminations on the relationships among science, religion, politics, and everyday life. Feynman is especially sensitive to the relationships between scientific scepticism, faithful doubt and ideological flexibility. These lectures have been transcribed verbatim, so they sometimes ramble and repeat themselves. But this slim volume has wisdom and wit on every page: it is a truly erudite and edifying meditation on Dostoevsky's observation that "There lies more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds". --Michael Joseph Gross

About the Author
'He is everything you want and expect a scientist to be: charming, sceptical, funny, blindingly intelligent … confirms one’s suspicion that Feynman was probably the coolest scientist who ever lived’ Guardian One of the world's greatest theoretical physicists and a Nobel laureate, Richard Feynman was also a man who fell, often jumped, into adventure. An artist, safe-cracker, practical joker and storyteller, his life was a series of combustible combinations made possible by his unique mixture of high intelligence, unquenchable curiosity and eternal scepticism.

Customer Reviews

Feynman on life, the universe, and everything
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.

Assets not faults
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.

A beginners guide to epistemology
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.