Feynman有意思的话

从来反对记忆名言警句——想我所想,问我要问,说我要说即可,管他谁说过呢,类似就是佐证,不同就是创新,但是,刚好看到别人整理好的Feynman在各个书各种场合说的有意思的话,摘下几句留在这里:真的说了我想说的话,还说的挺好。

Science Quotes by Richard P. Feynman

goodreads上的检索——关键字Feynman——结果

关于理解型学习

“I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”
― Richard Feynman

“They didn’t put two and two together. They didn’t even know what they knew. I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding, they learn by some other way — by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!”
― Richard Feynman

“What I cannot create, I do not understand.”
― Richard Feynman

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.”
― Richard Feynman

“Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.”
― Richard Feynman

“The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.”
― Richard Feynman

“When it came time for me to give my talk on the subject, I started off by drawing an outline of the cat and began to name the various muscles.
The other students in the class interrupt me: “We know all that!”
“Oh,” I say, “you do? Then no wonder I can catch up with you so fast after you’ve had four years of biology.” They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes.”
― Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

“Words can be meaningless. If they are used in such a way that no sharp conclusions can be drawn.”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“You see, I get so much fun out of thinking that I don’t want to destroy this pleasant machine that makes life such a big kick.”
― Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

“That was a very good way to get educated, working on the senior problems and learning how to pronounce things.”
― Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

“I learned from my father to translate: everything I read I try to figure out what it really means, what it’s really saying.”
― Richard Feynman, ‘What Do You Care What Other People Think?’: Further Adventures of a Curious Character

关于批判性思维(和第一部分“理解型学习有联系”,和独创性有联系)

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”
― Richard Feynman

“Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.”
― Richard Feynman

“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”
― Richard Feynman

“Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that’s the end of you.”
― Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

“What Do You Care What Other People Think?”
― Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman

“In general, we look for a new law by the following process: First we guess it; then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right; then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is — if it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong.”
― Richard Feynman

“We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt.
― Richard Feynman

“Curiosity demands that we ask questions, that we try to put things together and try to understand this multitude of aspects as perhaps resulting from the action of a relatively small number of elemental things and forces acting in an infinite variety of combinations”
― Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics vols 1-2

“Have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, ‘Is it reasonable?'”
― Richard Feynman

关于科学和艺术、生活

“I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is … I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.”
― Richard Feynman

“A poet once said, ‘The whole universe is in a glass of wine.’ We will probably never know in what sense he meant it, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflection in the glass; and our imagination adds atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth’s rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe’s age, and the evolution of stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization; all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts — physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on — remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure; drink it and forget it all!”
― Richard Feynman

“Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination – stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one – million – year – old light. A vast pattern – of which I am a part… What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?”
― Richard Feynman

“Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.”
― Richard Feynman

“Physics is to math what sex is to masturbation.”
― Richard Feynman

“– and pompous fools drive me up the wall. Ordinary fools are alright; you can talk to them and try to help them out. But pompous fools – guys who are fools and covering it all over and impressing people as to how wonderful they are with all this hocus pocus – THAT, I CANNOT STAND! An ordinary fool isn’t a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible!”
― Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

“… it is impossible to explain honestly the beauties of the laws of nature in a way that people can feel, without their having some deep understanding of mathematics. I am sorry, but this seems to be the case.”
― Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law

“I believe that we must attack these things in which we do not believe. Not attack by the method of cutting off the heads of the people, but attack in the sense of discuss. I believe that we should demand that people try in their own minds to obtain for themselves a more consistent picture of their own world; that they not permit themselves the luxury of having their brain cut in four pieces or two pieces even, and on one side they believe this and on the other side they believe that, but never try to compare the two points of view. Because we have learned that, by trying to put the points of view that we have in our head together and comparing one to the other, we make some progress in understanding and in appreciating where we are and what we are. And I believe that science has remained irrelevant because we wait until somebody asks us questions or until we are invited to give a speech on Einstein’s theory to people who don’t understand Newtonian mechanics, but we never are invited to give an attack on faith healing, or on astrology — on what is the scientific view of astrology today.”
― Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

可惜没有找到关于系联性思考(这个应该算
“They didn’t put two and two together. They didn’t even know what they knew. I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding, they learn by some other way — by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!”
― Richard Feynman
)的。另外,独创性我觉得比创新性好,只要独创就行,不一定是新的,例如旧的东西的新的角度的理解和看法,完全重新发明一遍旧的东西,在学习过程中,都是很有意义的。

附几个小品

“After reading the salary, I’ve decided that I must refuse. The reason I have to refuse a salary like that is I would be able to do what I’ve always wanted to do- -get a wonderful mistress, put her up in an apartment, buy her nice things.. . With the salary you have offered, I could actually do that, and I know what would happen to me. I’d worry about her, what she’s doing; I’d get into arguments when I come home, and so on. All this bother would make me uncomfortable and unhappy. I wouldn’t be able to do physics well, and it would be a big mess! What I’ve always wanted to do would be bad for me, so I’ve decided that I can’t accept your offer.”
― Richard Feynman

“I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he’s the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.”
― Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character

“It was a kind of one-upmanship, where nobody knows what’s going on, and they’d put the other one down as if they did know. They all fake that they know, and if one student admits for a moment that something is confusing by asking a question, the others take a high-handed attitude, acting as if it’s not confusing at all, telling him that he’s wasting their time… All the work they did, intelligent people, but they got themselves into this funny state of mind, this strange kind of self-propagating “education” which is meaningless, utterly meaningless.”
― Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

展示Feynman的思考方式的视频

教学相长

系联性思考(”See through connections”是我的邮件签名档)在我的研究工作和教学中有独特的地位。甚至它也是系统科学的核心思想。

系统科学还没有发展成熟。它有自己的思想——从个体到整体、从直接到间接、从具体系统到一般分析方法以及反过来从一般方法到具体系统(跨学科特性),有一些具有一定一般性的分析方法,没有自己的核心方程和理论,没有明确的学科知识基础,甚至没有一个好的界定(例如,有很多人把它看做应用数学,例如运筹学和控制论,的分支,或者反过来把应用数学看做系统科学的一部分)。一门仅仅有思想和不成体系的方法的科学是不能称作一门科学的。

于是,当我开始教授《系统科学基础》这门课的时候,第一个要解决的问题,就是思考什么是系统科学以及如何给学生说明白什么是系统科学。内容要体现系统科学的核心思想,还要通过具体的研究工作来体现,最好还要整理出来一个现有分析方法的体系,找到这个体系的知识基础并且进一步给学生整理一下这些知识基础。

于是,我发现,我必须做两件事情:从各种具有系统科学思想的研究工作中思考什么是系统科学,把系统科学的分析方法成立出来体系并且找到最少量最必要的知识基础。当然,整理好了之后,怎么跟学生分享,也是一个问题——不过,神奇的是,这个问题的答案还是在系联性思考。

第一件事情需要把不同的研究工作的共同点找到,有的时候还需要把各自的特点也找出来。这个也就是把不同的研究工作联系起来。第二件事情,需要把具有一定一般性的研究方法提炼出来——例如用网络来简化描述相互作用、相变的概念和分析技术(例如关联函数),并且把这些方法的知识基础整理和精简出来,突破学科和课程的限制,做到融会贯通。

第一件事情在我的研究工作上的直接影响就是每一个研究工作我会问:体现了系统科学的核心思想的哪一些,用到了和发展了哪一些方法。于是,跨学科性和从个体到整体从直接到间接确实成了我的研究工作的中心思想,不管所分析的具体系统是什么。第二件事情,再加上我们汉字结构和汉字学习的工作,促使我开始思考“精简教育”——有些东西不学不太影响对整个学科的理解而有些东西的学习顺序需要优化,并且找到了实现它的工具——概念地图。进而,对于教学的目的和学习的目的,也做了深刻的思考。我们学习是为了创造和创造性地使用知识,但是不是记住知识。对于创造和创造性地使用知识来说,最重要的事情是理解和内化知识形成一个相互联系的知识的体系。于是,我发现,还是系联性思考。

这个我自己身上的例子很好地体现了教学相长,教学和研究工作相互促进,教学和我自己的思考和理解相互促进。当然,在具体的知识层面的例子,传授这个具体知识导致我自己的理解更深刻更加融会贯通,也有。不过,这个就是教学相长的小小侧面了。

把我自己身上的这个例子记录下来,留给我自己进一步体会,还有其他人——尤其是年轻老师——参考。

不过,现在基本上有了一些能够体现学科思想和研究方法的具体例子,跨学科的融合了的知识基础也差不多已经成体系。因此,从我自己的角度来说,写完这本教材就可以教其他课去了。我准备先建设几年的《学会学习和思考》,然后,去上《数学模型》。

另外,整个过程是一个自加强正反馈过程:我用自己对系统科学和教学学习的思考为主线来整理和教授系统科学,整理和教授系统科学使得我对系统科学和教学学习的思考更加明确。这个正反馈,尽管是好事,有可能掉入一个局域最值的陷阱——再也看不见那些不在自己眼睛里面的东西,由于现在的眼睛只看那些觉得会进入眼睛的东西。这个问题,一方面需要通过看看和听听其他人怎么说,一方面,也只有等到过了这个欣赏最值的阶段,以后再来回顾反思了。

以学习方法和思维为目标的集中试点学校

当前,已经有一部分有前瞻性的人在呼吁以“学习方法和思维方式”为目标的教学,而不是以知识为目标的教学。但是,有这个思想的人,在学习方法和思维方式上有方法和经验的人,在具体课程的内容上有深刻理解的人,有执行能力的人,大多数时候不是同一个人。

于是,有人会说,我知道数学不能教成算术,可是教成什么啊,怎么教啊?有人也会说,我知道要教批判性思维,系联性思考,可是,我没有具体课程知识可以教啊。有人还可以说,我觉得挺好,可是忙死了,没时间啊。或者,我想干,可是校长不同意啊。

于是,我意识到,这是一个需要各个方面的人相互合作才能完成的事情。我希望我们这些前人的探索能够给更多的人参考。那么,能不能找到一定数量的思维教学、具体课程教学、教育管理者来一起合力建设一个试点学校呢?一个集中试点学校的示范意义远远大于一个个个体的老师或者一门门个体的课程的尝试啊。就一个这样的学校,就够了,就足以说明问题。

这个学校的大部分老师,都把具体课程和批判性思维系联性思考联系起来,重新梳理教学内容和目标,教的少学得多。关键就是这个变革在试点学校内部是系统性的。学科之间的关系要重新数理,各个课程的内容和目标要重新确定,老师的日常教学要用内容为媒介让学生学会这个学科的典型思考方法,基本研究对象,典型分析计算方式,还要增加对这个学科的情感,而且从中提炼更好的思考问题的方式,和进一步提高学习的效率。

这个试点的有心人们在哪里呢?