Let's be clear about this video; the "sham legacy" is the commercialization/exploitation of Feynman's legacy after he died. Feynman was not a charlatan. Collier doesn't claim he is. She talks about the very real contributions he made. Her criticism is largely about the way people scraped together any scrap of paper he had jotted down a note on and turned it into a thin book, "Feynman on XYZ topic".
But yes, he does catch criticism for his very real character flaws, his grandiosity, his philandering and inappropriate workplace behavior, and his physical abuse of his wife.
He was a complicated person. Much of the work discussing him is hagiography. This essay is even keeled but does not gloss over his flaws. Again, she discusses his very real contributions and legacy. It's a long essay; she makes time for the complexity of Feynman as a person.
If all you want to hear about Feynman is charming stories about Tuvan throat singing, you won't enjoy this essay. That's okay; it's not for everyone. There's an instinct to reject a critical work like this on it's face. I think that does a disservice, not only to Collier, but to us as students of history.
Collier is a working astrophysicist who spent months on this project. It is not a low effort hit piece. It's a critical but fair portrait from someone qualified to engage with the subject matter. I encourage everyone to withhold judgement until watching the entire essay. If you haven't seen it, you probably shouldn't make a knee jerk dismissal.
It should be knee-jerk dismissed because the submission topic is the textbooks, not the man, and it's derailed discussion into a tangent about his personal shortcomings. Not exactly in the spirit of intellectual curiosity HN tries to foster.
> Not exactly in the spirit of intellectual curiosity HN tries to foster.
I could not disagree more. If you don't see how a comprehensive, warts and all look at the man's life and legacy doesn't add context and foster curiosity, I'm not even sure what to tell you.
It didn't derail the conversation, it expanded it. There's still plenty of discussion about the lectures. This isn't even particularly close to the top of the thread.
What's opposed to curious discussion is knee jerk reactions and middlebrow dismissals.
These sort of people are what is pejoratively called "attention whores" with nothing worthwhile to contribute on the topic under discussion. Hence they always come up with provocative phrases/statements simply to make themselves feel relevant.
Downvote and Flag these sorts of comments into oblivion; don't engage with them.
Some people are (understandably) upset at the title of the video. I will summarize some of the main interesting beats in the video for those who don't want to watch this 3 hour masterpiece.
(1) The stories in "Surely you are joking Mr. Feynman" portray Feynman in a mean-spirited, sometimes sexist light.
(2) These books were not actually written by Mr. Feynman. They were actually written by Ralph Laden.
(3) Upon further reflection, almost all the stories are either made up or greatly exaggarated. Presumably, Feynman spent a lot of time telling and retelling these stories
(4) Also, Ralph Laden is Bob Laden's son. Supposedly, Bob Laden is also a famous physicist. But Ralph never really mentions him
Let me begin by saying that I am a friend of Ralph Leighton, whom I have known for 27 years. I am also a friend of Feynman's children, and several of Feynman's friends and colleagues. Now I will tell you this: Collier is a liar. The books "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" and "What Do You Care What Other People Think" were made the same way that The Feynman Lectures on Physics was made: Feynman was recorded, and the recordings were transcribed and (lightly) edited for readability. It is true for ALL of Feynman's books (also Stephen Hawking's many books, and those of some other authors) that he did not put pen to paper himself, but what is written came from him, and are not the inventions of Ralph Leighton, nor does Leighton claim authorship to them. It is another lie of Collier that the stories in Feynman's autobiographical books are "either made up or greatly exaggerated," for which Collier provides no evidence whatsoever, and for which there are witnesses who claim the contrary - this is something Collier just "made up", because, apparently her goal in making several pejorative videos about Feynman is to defame him, for her own personal reasons. Yes it is true that Ralph Leighton is Robert Leighton's son, and Robert Leighton, who is one of Feynman's coauthors in The Feynman Lectures on Physics, was a great physicist, best known for establishing the field of microwave astronomy. But why would Ralph mention his father in Feynman's autobiographical books, when Robert Leighton is not a character in any of the stories Feynman tells in those books? What kind of criticism is that to make of Ralph? This is another example of how Collier is merely trying to smear the names of Feynman and the people associated with him. Note that Collier also says in her videos that The Feynman Lectures on Physics (the subject of this discussion) is "not worth reading," which puts her at odds with almost everyone who reads it - it is, in fact, one of the most (if not THE most) popular physics books ever written, and many great physicists sing its praises. Once again, this is Collier just dissing Feynman and his works. Collier is a Feynman-hating liar who fully deserves to be ignored.
How this guy captures the imagination of the English speaking world is astonishing.
Sommerfeld
Landau
Schwinger
They mop the floor with Feynman but no one remembers them. Landau, meanwhile had the most comprehensive set of physics book, Sommerfeld the most accessible deep set of physics books.
Meanwhile "the Feynman Lectures" burry important details that will derail a train as soon as you leave the safe space of first order approximations.
Feynman's lectures are akin to the "everything is a mass on a spring" meme. Actually, nothing is, and the nobilities are everything. To his credit, though, Feynman never intended his lectures to be more than an intro survey class
I am the OP who posted this with an idea of eliciting other notable works on Physics and comparing them to Feynman Lectures. I do not want this to be derailed into talking about the man.
While i know of Landau & Lifshitz, i have not read Arnold Sommerfeld's nor Julian Schwinger's works.
I sincerely suggest that you post a top-level comment in this thread with your takes on Feynman vs. Other authors works that you mention. This would be of great help to everybody interested in Physics and Science.
I think Feynman's popularity lie with his deep understanding of phenomena and ability to explain them to others - "If you can't explain it to a six-year old, you don't understand it yourself"
The guy invented the path integral in his PhD thesis. He invented Feynman diagrams and figured out how to do finite calculations in quantum electrodynamics. Unless you're a perfect human being, please, cut him just a tiny bit of slack.
I understand not watching a 3 hour video before leaving a comment, but this is a disrespectful reaction to a very well thought out video by a professional physicist giving a nuanced opinion about Feynman's legacy. She acknowledges many times in the video that Feynman was a great physicist who deserved his Nobel prize. The central topic of the video is dissecting his public image and the many books published under his name that he did not in fact write, including Surely You're Joking and indeed the Feynman Lectures, as well as criticizing misogynistic behaviors celebrated in those books that has left a negative impact on the culture of physics.
(And also, "cutting him a tiny bit of slack" is pretty lax language considering the behavior being criticized includes beating his wife.)
misogynistic behaviors were cultural at the time, I agree they're abhorrent but people are embedded in their culture. The same is said of Hitchcock, (as an example) and his behaviour was unacceptable by todays standards. We've come some way from that but still a way to go.
From the about the authors in the OP's link "Feynman was a remarkably effective educator. Of all his numerous awards, he was especially proud of the Oersted Medal for Teaching, which he won in 1972.". He probably didn't do a lot of the stuff he popularised, but that was what he did, it is a skill taking abstract stuff and making it coherent. I know when I did physics (in the 90's) many swore by his books, particularly for quantum, it was a bit of a secret we'd have these incomprehensible books on quantum, and someone would say - have you seen "The Feynman lectures", they are good, I wish we had the videos available at the time.
I've watched large sections of this video before, because it gets posted often. It's a 2-year-old video.
Based on that viewing, I think the author has a chip on her shoulder about Feynman, and is dismissive about his teaching and books, and is set on convicting him of being a very naughty boy.
One of the things that stand out from the video: The speaker says that Feynman didn't write the Feynman lectures. Wrong. He wrote and delivered the lectures. If you go to Caltech's Feynman lectures website, they even have audio of him delivering the lectures [0] and photographs of the chalk board [1]. How could someone make a 3-hour-long video about Feynman and not even know this?
Feynman was an immensely gifted physicist and one of the most (maybe the most) engaging and innovative physics teachers of the last century. You can criticize him for embellishing stories about himself, but those stories are incredibly entertaining and quirky, which is why so many people like them. He was a big personality, and it comes out in his stories. He wasn't a perfect person, but no one is, and there has been a movement in the last few years to try to demonize him (mostly unsuccessfully, given Feynman's continued popularity).
Finally, if one makes a video with a title like, "the sham legacy of Richard Feynman," one can't complain about getting pushback.
It just wears thin after a while. Nobody studies Feynman to learn social skills or sexual ethics. If they did, these types of complaints would certainly be relevant... but they don't, and they aren't.
His wife allegedly secretly reported him to the FBI as a potential spy, communist, security risk, fraud. It was an anonymous letter.
Given how different this wife's (second wife) description of Feynman compared to others is, that there are no record of complaints from first wife, the way her younger sister describes him, it could well be an earlier repeat of the now familiar Johnny Depp story, where it's not initially clear who the abusive person here is.
The marriage was certainly not a happy one and some people turn vindictive, turn to smearing characters. Especially if the person has narcissistic tendencies.
Let's be clear about this video; the "sham legacy" is the commercialization/exploitation of Feynman's legacy after he died. Feynman was not a charlatan. Collier doesn't claim he is. She talks about the very real contributions he made. Her criticism is largely about the way people scraped together any scrap of paper he had jotted down a note on and turned it into a thin book, "Feynman on XYZ topic".
But yes, he does catch criticism for his very real character flaws, his grandiosity, his philandering and inappropriate workplace behavior, and his physical abuse of his wife.
He was a complicated person. Much of the work discussing him is hagiography. This essay is even keeled but does not gloss over his flaws. Again, she discusses his very real contributions and legacy. It's a long essay; she makes time for the complexity of Feynman as a person.
If all you want to hear about Feynman is charming stories about Tuvan throat singing, you won't enjoy this essay. That's okay; it's not for everyone. There's an instinct to reject a critical work like this on it's face. I think that does a disservice, not only to Collier, but to us as students of history.
Collier is a working astrophysicist who spent months on this project. It is not a low effort hit piece. It's a critical but fair portrait from someone qualified to engage with the subject matter. I encourage everyone to withhold judgement until watching the entire essay. If you haven't seen it, you probably shouldn't make a knee jerk dismissal.
It should be knee-jerk dismissed because the submission topic is the textbooks, not the man, and it's derailed discussion into a tangent about his personal shortcomings. Not exactly in the spirit of intellectual curiosity HN tries to foster.
> Not exactly in the spirit of intellectual curiosity HN tries to foster.
I could not disagree more. If you don't see how a comprehensive, warts and all look at the man's life and legacy doesn't add context and foster curiosity, I'm not even sure what to tell you.
It didn't derail the conversation, it expanded it. There's still plenty of discussion about the lectures. This isn't even particularly close to the top of the thread.
What's opposed to curious discussion is knee jerk reactions and middlebrow dismissals.
Ad hominem is indeed the hallmark of a small mind.
Well said !
These sort of people are what is pejoratively called "attention whores" with nothing worthwhile to contribute on the topic under discussion. Hence they always come up with provocative phrases/statements simply to make themselves feel relevant.
Downvote and Flag these sorts of comments into oblivion; don't engage with them.
5 replies →
Some people are (understandably) upset at the title of the video. I will summarize some of the main interesting beats in the video for those who don't want to watch this 3 hour masterpiece.
(1) The stories in "Surely you are joking Mr. Feynman" portray Feynman in a mean-spirited, sometimes sexist light. (2) These books were not actually written by Mr. Feynman. They were actually written by Ralph Laden. (3) Upon further reflection, almost all the stories are either made up or greatly exaggarated. Presumably, Feynman spent a lot of time telling and retelling these stories (4) Also, Ralph Laden is Bob Laden's son. Supposedly, Bob Laden is also a famous physicist. But Ralph never really mentions him
Let me begin by saying that I am a friend of Ralph Leighton, whom I have known for 27 years. I am also a friend of Feynman's children, and several of Feynman's friends and colleagues. Now I will tell you this: Collier is a liar. The books "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" and "What Do You Care What Other People Think" were made the same way that The Feynman Lectures on Physics was made: Feynman was recorded, and the recordings were transcribed and (lightly) edited for readability. It is true for ALL of Feynman's books (also Stephen Hawking's many books, and those of some other authors) that he did not put pen to paper himself, but what is written came from him, and are not the inventions of Ralph Leighton, nor does Leighton claim authorship to them. It is another lie of Collier that the stories in Feynman's autobiographical books are "either made up or greatly exaggerated," for which Collier provides no evidence whatsoever, and for which there are witnesses who claim the contrary - this is something Collier just "made up", because, apparently her goal in making several pejorative videos about Feynman is to defame him, for her own personal reasons. Yes it is true that Ralph Leighton is Robert Leighton's son, and Robert Leighton, who is one of Feynman's coauthors in The Feynman Lectures on Physics, was a great physicist, best known for establishing the field of microwave astronomy. But why would Ralph mention his father in Feynman's autobiographical books, when Robert Leighton is not a character in any of the stories Feynman tells in those books? What kind of criticism is that to make of Ralph? This is another example of how Collier is merely trying to smear the names of Feynman and the people associated with him. Note that Collier also says in her videos that The Feynman Lectures on Physics (the subject of this discussion) is "not worth reading," which puts her at odds with almost everyone who reads it - it is, in fact, one of the most (if not THE most) popular physics books ever written, and many great physicists sing its praises. Once again, this is Collier just dissing Feynman and his works. Collier is a Feynman-hating liar who fully deserves to be ignored.
I apologize for not being respond to the entirety your comment.
I assure you that Angela does not say that the Feynman Lectures are "not worth reading" in that video.
So true.
How this guy captures the imagination of the English speaking world is astonishing.
Sommerfeld Landau Schwinger
They mop the floor with Feynman but no one remembers them. Landau, meanwhile had the most comprehensive set of physics book, Sommerfeld the most accessible deep set of physics books.
Meanwhile "the Feynman Lectures" burry important details that will derail a train as soon as you leave the safe space of first order approximations.
Feynman's lectures are akin to the "everything is a mass on a spring" meme. Actually, nothing is, and the nobilities are everything. To his credit, though, Feynman never intended his lectures to be more than an intro survey class
> Sommerfeld Landau Schwinger
I am the OP who posted this with an idea of eliciting other notable works on Physics and comparing them to Feynman Lectures. I do not want this to be derailed into talking about the man.
While i know of Landau & Lifshitz, i have not read Arnold Sommerfeld's nor Julian Schwinger's works.
I sincerely suggest that you post a top-level comment in this thread with your takes on Feynman vs. Other authors works that you mention. This would be of great help to everybody interested in Physics and Science.
I think Feynman's popularity lie with his deep understanding of phenomena and ability to explain them to others - "If you can't explain it to a six-year old, you don't understand it yourself"
That was rather more interesting than I thought it would be.
The guy invented the path integral in his PhD thesis. He invented Feynman diagrams and figured out how to do finite calculations in quantum electrodynamics. Unless you're a perfect human being, please, cut him just a tiny bit of slack.
I understand not watching a 3 hour video before leaving a comment, but this is a disrespectful reaction to a very well thought out video by a professional physicist giving a nuanced opinion about Feynman's legacy. She acknowledges many times in the video that Feynman was a great physicist who deserved his Nobel prize. The central topic of the video is dissecting his public image and the many books published under his name that he did not in fact write, including Surely You're Joking and indeed the Feynman Lectures, as well as criticizing misogynistic behaviors celebrated in those books that has left a negative impact on the culture of physics.
(And also, "cutting him a tiny bit of slack" is pretty lax language considering the behavior being criticized includes beating his wife.)
If you listen to the taped Feynman lectures, yes Feynman did write them. The published versions were edited from transcripts.
https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/recordings.html
3 replies →
misogynistic behaviors were cultural at the time, I agree they're abhorrent but people are embedded in their culture. The same is said of Hitchcock, (as an example) and his behaviour was unacceptable by todays standards. We've come some way from that but still a way to go.
From the about the authors in the OP's link "Feynman was a remarkably effective educator. Of all his numerous awards, he was especially proud of the Oersted Medal for Teaching, which he won in 1972.". He probably didn't do a lot of the stuff he popularised, but that was what he did, it is a skill taking abstract stuff and making it coherent. I know when I did physics (in the 90's) many swore by his books, particularly for quantum, it was a bit of a secret we'd have these incomprehensible books on quantum, and someone would say - have you seen "The Feynman lectures", they are good, I wish we had the videos available at the time.
11 replies →
His wife accused him of choking her when she interrupted his science. She also accused him of playing the bongos too loud.
This was during divorce testimony. She got the house and he got the bongos.
2 replies →
I've watched large sections of this video before, because it gets posted often. It's a 2-year-old video.
Based on that viewing, I think the author has a chip on her shoulder about Feynman, and is dismissive about his teaching and books, and is set on convicting him of being a very naughty boy.
One of the things that stand out from the video: The speaker says that Feynman didn't write the Feynman lectures. Wrong. He wrote and delivered the lectures. If you go to Caltech's Feynman lectures website, they even have audio of him delivering the lectures [0] and photographs of the chalk board [1]. How could someone make a 3-hour-long video about Feynman and not even know this?
Feynman was an immensely gifted physicist and one of the most (maybe the most) engaging and innovative physics teachers of the last century. You can criticize him for embellishing stories about himself, but those stories are incredibly entertaining and quirky, which is why so many people like them. He was a big personality, and it comes out in his stories. He wasn't a perfect person, but no one is, and there has been a movement in the last few years to try to demonize him (mostly unsuccessfully, given Feynman's continued popularity).
Finally, if one makes a video with a title like, "the sham legacy of Richard Feynman," one can't complain about getting pushback.
0. https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/recordings.html
1. https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_01.html
8 replies →
He was accused, in divorce papers. And it wasn't beating, FWIW.
path integrals existed since the 19th century
Cite an example please.
Brave to link to that here.
It just wears thin after a while. Nobody studies Feynman to learn social skills or sexual ethics. If they did, these types of complaints would certainly be relevant... but they don't, and they aren't.
People also don’t think he’s one of the greatest physicists ever.
As he said, he was just an ordinary person who worked very hard.
5 replies →
His wife allegedly secretly reported him to the FBI as a potential spy, communist, security risk, fraud. It was an anonymous letter.
Given how different this wife's (second wife) description of Feynman compared to others is, that there are no record of complaints from first wife, the way her younger sister describes him, it could well be an earlier repeat of the now familiar Johnny Depp story, where it's not initially clear who the abusive person here is.
The marriage was certainly not a happy one and some people turn vindictive, turn to smearing characters. Especially if the person has narcissistic tendencies.
[Who Smeared Feynman] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46974999
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Note that this was before the times of no fault divorce.
At that time it was common to allege extreme behavior (often mutually agreed upon), to Trump up the charges just to make the divorce go through.
I can't help imagining his wife nagging him about taking out the trash just when he was about to solve quantum gravity.
I'm not saying it's ok... But it doesn't break my heart.
I guess it depends on how much pressure he applied.
The shit people tell you about themselves for free, unprompted. It’s unreal.
1 reply →
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What's this better stuff?
Shrek for example.
2 replies →
yt is YouTube?