Gribbins, J. & M. Richard Feynman

I go back now to John & Mary Gribbin's biography of Richard Feynman. It is too bad that publishers no longer have editors who might squeeze out the cliches of sophomore survey courses. It is a limitation of Feynman's thought that he was unable to grasp the philosophical concepts which underlie the study of physics. Interesting is the remark that Feynman was admitted to Princeton with the understanding that, although Jewish, he was not religious. The Gibbins' refer to Feynman's "genius". Feynman would have choked on that. He was a good physicist because he never got far away from the real daily world. He recognized that we could give explanations - mathematical formulas - for happenings in the world; the which explanations are helpful to us. But the bird sings whether we understand the song or not; that the ring loosened on the Challenger the same way a ring loosens on a finger in cold water.