Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Finished (Audiobook) - "Perfectly Resonable Deviations from the Beaten Track" - Richard P. Feynman

"Perfectly Resonable Deviations from the Beaten Track" - Richard P. Feynman is the third Feynman book I've listened to ("Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman" and "What Do You Care What Other People Think" are the others).  This is a nice tie-in - it shows the source material for stories told in the other books, and reveals a nice side of Dr. Feynman - some letters are to significant figures in science, but many are to old students, members of the public, critics, etc.  


All correspondence was handled with a grace, humour and respect, even letters to those writers not displaying the same virtues.  The letters speak highly of Dr. Feynman as a thinker, scholar, and a man - no one was disparaged.


His rejection of societies that offer nothing more than exclusivity is refreshing, and his misgivings about the Nobel prize is nice to hear, and nice to see mentioned many times consistently over a long period.  It's nice to see someone who's invited to the exclusive events to have a little humility - to see the shallowness of some of the institutions, even while they are currying favour.

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