Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

Feynman recalls a time when he “felt always a little behind” in matters of particle physics, and when “everybody seemed to be smart, and [he] didn’t feel [he] was keeping up” (284). Nevertheless, Feynman persists, going so far as to ask whether one of the fundamental theories his colleagues are using might be incorrect. Later, different scientists prove experimentally that the theory is, indeed, incorrect, but Feynman still lacks confidence in his understanding of the field. His sister points out that it is not a matter of him being unable to understand but that he “didn’t figure it out [his] own way” (281). After taking her advice and thinking it through on his own terms, Feynman understands the problems better and offers new predictions that nobody has yet tested experimentally. When he sees experimental results, Feynman finds them unsatisfactory because they appear to vary so widely. He continues to work on the theory in his idiosyncratic way until he gets it “all worked out” (290). Colleagues tell him he must be mistaken and that he is either joking or misunderstanding the problem. The debate continues until Feynman goes back and looks at the original data. He recognizes that his mistakes have come from listening to what other experts said about that data rather than working through it on his own. This revelation leads Feynman to conclude, “Since then I never pay any attention to anything by ‘experts.’ I calculate everything myself” (292). It’s a mistake to blindly rely on expert opinion.

Feynman occasionally gives talks at a local community college. The rules require that he be paid a small sum, but Feynman demands that he be required to sign his name no more than 13 times to be allowed to give the talk and get paid. When it turns out that there seems to be no way to complete the process with thirteen signatures, Feynman insists on the original terms. It causes an enormous hassle, but eventually, he does get paid and signs only 13 times.

Feynman portrays himself as the stereotypical absentminded professor, who cannot remember which city he is supposed to visit for a conference. He makes it to the venue by imitating his colleagues’ use of the Greek alphabet, something that his cab dispatcher recalls and associates with the proper city.

Feynman befriends artist Jirayr Zorthian, who admires Feynman’s bongo drumming. They argue about whether artists can understand science and, if not, whether that makes art empty and useless. Zorthian offers to teach Feynman to draw, which the physicist believes will be “impossible” (299), but Feynman agrees to the lessons because, he says, he “wanted to convey an emotion [he has] about the beauty of the world. It’s difficult to describe because it’s an emotion” (299). Feynman, in turn, offers to teach Zorthian physics, though Feynman turns out to be a much better art student than Zorthian is a science student. Zorthian encourages Feynman to take more art classes, and Feynman discovers that the way of teaching art is different from the way of teaching science. Feynman is not quite satisfied with the instructor’s pedagogy, but he discovers that he can create a good drawing when he decides not to “worry about how the drawing is going to come out,” to value process over outcome (303). Feynman begins to study art history and continues drawing, going so far as to sell several works under the pseudonym “Ofey.” He concludes that the value of art is that “it gives somebody, individually, pleasure” (306). In the end, however, Feynman gives up working hard at drawing. He cannot accept that some artists simply envision the world as they want to see it rather than as a physical reality, and he is humbled by an art critic who points out to him that “he is only an amateur” (317).

In the 1950s, Feynman gives lectures outside Caltech on topics such as curiosity, technology, power, the atomic bomb, and the relationship between science and religion. In preparation for a conference on the topic of “the ethics of equality,” he is given a list of suggested readings and worries that he has not read any of the titles. Feynman is assigned to a subpanel on “the fragmentation of knowledge,” but he is not quite certain what that term means, though he comes to discover that it means different things to people with different academic expertise, which illustrates the point of fragmentation. However, a stenographer pays him a compliment when, first, she presumes he is not a professor, and then when she discovers he is a physicist says, “Every time you get up to ask a question […] I understand exactly what you mean […] so I thought you can’t be a professor” (321). He is frustrated with colleagues who are “pompous fools,” whom he distinguishes from “ordinary fools.” The former are bent on “impressing people as to how wonderful they are” and are fundamentally dishonest while the latter “isn’t a faker” (323-24). The experience upsets Feynman so much that he refuses to attend more conferences of this kind.

Feynman then offers “a footnote” to his conference anecdote in which he details his arguments with young rabbis at the Jewish Theological Seminary. They are discussing what kinds of things are prohibited on the Sabbath according to interpretations of the Talmud. As a non-religious person of Jewish heritage, Feynman is intrigued by their studies but also horrified by their lack of scientific knowledge. When they ask him a scientific question like “Is electricity fire?” he is appalled because they are not “interested in science at all [...] They are only interested in resolving some question brought up by the Talmud” (324-25). Though Feynman despairs that rabbis interpret science in light of ancient cultural traditions, he is heartened at the ways Jewish culture respects education, and the rabbis’ families give him a warm welcome as a professor.

Feynman is often asked to advise the government on matters concerning the military. Feynman dislikes these meetings and mocks the ideas that are presented in them. However, he feels it is his duty to attend. The military officials are impressed with what Feynman has to say, but Feynman characterizes anything important he said as “sheer luck” and refuses to attend more meetings of this group (329).

Moving to the 1960s, Feynman says his friends are still giving advice to the government but that he has no such “feeling of social responsibility” (329). When he learns about the math and science being taught in textbooks, however, he decides to get involved. Asking to review all the textbooks himself, Feynman discovers that they are all “lousy.” He concludes that the authors “were faking it. They were teaching something that they didn’t understand” (332). In sharing his opinion with the textbook committee, he goes into great detail about what is “good and bad in all the books; [he] had a reason for every rating” (334), but he also discovers that his contributions seem valuable because he “was the only guy on the committee who read all the books” (335). Although Feynman’s priority is to find books that properly teach math and science, he learns that California adopted textbooks based on cost rather than content. Moreover, publishers attempted to bribe members of the textbook committee into adopting their editions.

Feynman relates that winning the Nobel Prize makes it difficult to teach or lecture to small groups. He is now a celebrity and people want to hear him even if they don’t understand what he is saying. He recalls that he considered turning down the Nobel Prize, but a reporter convinced him that that will only draw more attention. Feynman accepts the award and must go to Sweden to receive it, which he dreads because of all the “royalty and pomp” surrounding the ceremony (342). He finds out, however, that there are light-hearted aspects to the Nobel Prize traditions, such as a student-led ceremony at which winners are required to make frog noises. Such silliness helps Feynman work through his “psychological difficulty” of having to give an acceptance speech in from of the King of Sweden and other dignitaries (348). The speech is well received, but Feynman also relates the kinds of social errors he makes when among the social elites, such as offending a Danish princess. He finds a friend in the Japanese ambassador, with whom he shares similar views on education and culture, but ultimately concludes that “the Nobel Prize has been something of a pain in the neck” (352).

At UCLA in the early 1970s, the physics department decides that physicists need “more culture” so a colloquium is organized on the math and astronomy of the Maya (354). Though skeptical about this premise of needing more “culture,” Feynman reminisces about becoming fascinated with an ancient Mayan codex that he determines he can try to decipher as a kind of code or puzzle. When asked to present his insights on the topic at UCLA, Feynman gets “a big kick” out of it because it gives him the chance to be “something that [he is] not” and an “amateur expert” (359). He even has the pleasure of showing the world that recent reports of the discovery of a new Mayan codex are “a real hoax” (359).

Feynman explains why a well-known volume of his lectures features a photo of him playing bongo drums: it’s a non-science passion of his. He first took up drumming while at Los Alamos, imitating Native American rhythmic patterns. At Cornell, he finds encouragement to keep drumming when his landlord calls him and, instead of asking him to stop, asks him if she can come to listen more closely. At Caltech, he spends leisure time learning drumming at clubs on the Sunset Strip and is even invited up on stage to play along with a professional group. At a party at a colleague’s house, he meets the host’s son, Ralph Leighton, with whom he begins a long musical relationship. Leighton is also the ghostwriter of Surely You’re Joking.

Leighton and Feynman are invited to perform in Caltech dramatic performances and eventually to work with a choreographer who invites them to drum for a ballet school in San Francisco. Feynman agrees to the offers so long as nobody is told that he is anything other than a drummer. Working with the choreographer and dancers, Feynman and Leighton contribute to a successful public performance of the work, which in turn leads to further collaborations. Their piece is performed on the East Coast and eventually entered in a competition in Paris where it is “the favorite of the audience” though not the judges who feel “the music was not really satisfactory” (371-72). Feynman takes ironic pleasure in being “at last found out” as a fake and amateur by people “who knew music from drums” (372).

Returning to his fascination with dream states, Feynman recounts anecdotes about his experiences with sense-deprivation tanks. Feynman tries the tanks over a dozen times, structuring his experiences as a kind of scientific experiment that help satisfy his curiosity about “what happens when you go to sleep” (375). The tanks are alleged to produce hallucinations, though Feynman does not initially experience this. He tries the tanks in combination with drugs like ketamine and marijuana to test whether they change his ability to hallucinate. Ultimately, he stumbles upon a method of trying to “move [his] ego, an inch to one side” which has his desired and consistent effect (326). He fine-tunes his self-experimentation to test whether he is hallucinating or dreaming, and he concludes that hallucinations have nothing to do with “anything external to the internal psychological state of the person who’s got the hallucinations” (380). He believes he should be able to have them by putting himself in the proper mindset. He is never able to produce that effect in himself without the tanks but remains convinced that it should be possible with practice.

The chapter is an adaptation of the commencement address that Feynman gave at Caltech in 1974. He cites common beliefs in things like UFOs and astrology to point out that, though we live in “a scientific age,” it may not be “a scientific world” (382). Feynman is fascinated with why people believe in reflexology and extrasensory perception and what it means that “these things are said to be scientific” when they are actually “pseudoscience” (384). He challenges the graduates “to look into theories that don’t work, and science that isn’t science,” ideas that he groups under the term “cargo cult science” (384). Cargo cult science picks and chooses evidence to confirm its starting hypothesis. Feynman encourages his audience to embrace “details that could throw doubt on [their] interpretation” (385), and “give all of the information […] not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction” (386). Scientists must be aware of “the ways we fool ourselves” and take pains “to show how [we are] maybe wrong” (386-87). He points out examples of poor science even within reputable scientific establishments: experiments that are not properly organized and results that are published because they have good public relations value or secure more funding but which overlook fundamental errors in method. Cargo cult science does not pay attention to interesting and challenging results. Real science, which has integrity at its core, allows people to get “chance results” rather than predetermined ones (391). Good science involves respecting the scientific method and following the results with integrity wherever they may lead.