FEYNMAN

Richard P. Feynman was an investigator.

Lawyers are investigators.  We are responsible for investigating whether accusations made in a legal context are true.

I call the subject "human investigation," because trying to find out is something we do, as humans.  I'm aware that animals investigate, as well, such as when one sniffs the air and has a sharp eye peeled both for prey and predator.  Investigation is a matter of life and death for them as well as us.

We are aided by an accumulation of knowledge and experience that we can consult.

Sometimes we get it wrong.  How many times have you read of our imprisoning the wrong person for a long time, or sentencing a person to death for a crime the person didn't commit?

So the pitfalls of human investigation, sometimes in my field called "criminal investigation," are well known, yet we keep making them.

Why?

Because we are human and let our desires interfere with our brains.

Recently I came across a web site for admirers of Feynman and posted the following:

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Not a physicist or scientist myself, so why do I admire RPF as much as I do, which is a lot?

The reason is that he's the best I've come across in a field that interests me, human investigation, meaning investigation of anything important by humans.

Could be scientific, medical, legal, anything having political ramifications, or religious, astrological, supernatural, magical, etc.

"Cargo Cult Science," the last chapter of his popular work, "Surely, You're Joking..." taken from his address at the Caltech graduation in 1974, is a plea to investigate competently and with integrity.

By 'science' he means 'investigation.'

Science is investigation.

He says that the Cargo Cult people failed properly to investigate with integrity and thus got a few things wrong.

However, they weren't trying to investigate; they were trying to wave in non-existent cargo planes like the ones they'd seen the American soldiers waving in during the war in the South Pacific.

The tale shows that RPF equates science, as in "Cargo Cult Science," as being investigation, whether the Stone-Age types in the Solomon Islands realized it or not.

Going through the proper motions was all they cared about and they almost did, in form, anyway.

He defines integrity as the requirement to show how you might be wrong.

He sets forth Rule-1 of investigation: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, but remember, you are the easiest person to fool."

One can pull many other useful precepts from Feynman's letters and other works.

I especially admire his book on the Challenger disaster, noting his important observation that "Nature cannot be fooled," so watch out for shortcuts and failure to make the correct statistical inferences such as by ignoring the Law of Large Numbers, for although you may escape its effect some of the time, by luck, someday it will rear up and bite you.

I admire his attitude, epitomized by a statement I recall from the Gleick biography, to the effect that RPF welcomes doubt, uses doubt as an inspiration to investigate further.

As opposed to others who prefer alleged certainty of the kind promised by many religions which purport to say how things are, based on a god who isn't.

I wonder what other non-scientists get out of reading Feynman?

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