Richard Feynman on Religion, Science, the Search for Truth & Our Willingness to Live with Doubt

A com­plete­ly unsur­pris­ing thing has hap­pened dur­ing the first sea­son of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cos­mos reboot. Cre­ation­ists vocal­ly com­plained that the show does not give their point of view an equal hear­ing. Tyson respond­ed, say­ing “you don’t talk about the spher­i­cal earth with NASA and then say let’s give equal time to the flat-earth­ers.” The anal­o­gy is more amus­ing than effec­tive, since rough­ly fifty per­cent of Amer­i­cans are Cre­ation­ists, while per­haps 49.9 per­cent few­er believe the earth is flat. But the point stands. If sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ries were arrived at by pop­u­lar vote, the “equal time” argu­ment might make some sense. Of course that’s not how sci­ence works. Is this bias? As Tyson put it in one of his well-craft­ed tweets, “you are not biased any time you ever speak the truth.”

“But what is truth?” asks a cer­tain kind of skep­tic. That, sug­gests the late Nobel prize-win­ning physi­cist Richard Feyn­man above, depends upon your method. If you’re doing sci­ence, you may find answers, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly the ones you want:

If you expect­ed sci­ence to give all the answers to the won­der­ful ques­tions about what we are, where we’re going, what the mean­ing of the uni­verse is and so on, then I think you can eas­i­ly become dis­il­lu­sioned and look for some mys­tic answer.

Going to the sci­ences, says Feyn­man, to “get an answer to some deep philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion,” means “you may be wrong. It may be that you can’t get an answer to that ques­tion by find­ing out more about the char­ac­ter of nature.” Sci­ence does not begin with answers, but with doubt: “Is sci­ence true? No, no we don’t know what’s true, we’re try­ing to find out.” Feynman’s sci­en­tif­ic atti­tude is pro­found­ly agnos­tic; he’d rather “live with doubt than have answers that might be wrong.”

Feyn­man couch­es his com­ments in per­son­al terms, admit­ting there are sci­en­tists who have reli­gious faith, or as he puts it “mys­tic answers,” and that he “doesn’t under­stand that.” He declines to say any­thing more. While sim­i­lar­ly agnos­tic, Neil deGrasse Tyson states his opin­ions a bit more force­ful­ly on sci­en­tists who are believ­ers, say­ing that around one third of “ful­ly-func­tion­ing” “Western/American sci­en­tists claim that there is a god to whom they pray.” Yet unlike the claims of Answers in Gen­e­sis and oth­er Cre­ation­ist out­fits, “There is no exam­ple of some­one read­ing their scrip­ture and say­ing, ‘I have a pre­dic­tion about the world that no one knows yet, because this gave me insight. Let’s go test that pre­dic­tion,’ and have the pre­dic­tion be cor­rect.”

Both Feyn­man and Tyson seem to agree that the sci­en­tif­ic and Cre­ation­ist meth­ods for dis­cov­er­ing “truth,” what­ev­er that may be, are basi­cal­ly incom­pat­i­ble. Says Feyn­man: “There are very remark­able mys­ter­ies… but those are mys­ter­ies I want to inves­ti­gate with­out know­ing the answers to them.” For that rea­son, says Feyn­man, he “can’t believe the spe­cial sto­ries that have been made up about our rela­tion­ship to the uni­verse.” His word­ing recalls the phrase Answers in Gen­e­sis uses to char­ac­ter­ize human ori­gins: “spe­cial cre­ation,” the descrip­tion of a method that places mean­ing and val­ue before evi­dence, and dogged­ly assumes to know the truth about what it sets out to inves­ti­gate in igno­rance.

Con­front­ed with the Cre­ation­ists of today, Feyn­man would like­ly lump them in with what he called in a 1974 Cal­tech com­mence­ment speech “Car­go Cult Sci­ence,” or “sci­ence that isn’t sci­ence” but that intim­i­dates “ordi­nary peo­ple with com­mon­sense ideas.” That lec­ture appears in a col­lec­tion of Feynman’s speech­es, lec­tures, inter­views and arti­cles called The Plea­sure of Find­ing Things Out, which also hap­pens to be the title of the pro­gram from which the clip at the top comes.

Pro­duced by the BBC in 1981, the hour-long inter­view was taped for a show called Hori­zon which, like Cos­mos, show­cas­es sci­en­tists shar­ing the joys of dis­cov­ery with a lay audi­ence. Like Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Carl Sagan before him, Feyn­man was a very lik­able and accom­plished sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tor. He had lit­tle time for phi­los­o­phy, but his prac­tice of the sci­en­tif­ic method is unim­peach­able. Of the Feyn­man TV spe­cial above, Nobel Prize-win­ning chemist Sir Har­ry Kro­to remarked: “The 1981 Feyn­man-Hori­zon is the best sci­ence pro­gram I have ever seen. This is not just my opin­ion — it is also the opin­ion of many of the best sci­en­tists that I know who have seen the pro­gram… It should be manda­to­ry view­ing for all stu­dents whether they be sci­ence or arts stu­dents.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

Richard Feyn­man Intro­duces the World to Nan­otech­nol­o­gy with Two Sem­i­nal Lec­tures (1959 & 1984)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness


by | Permalink | Comments (8) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (8)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • Hanoch says:

    I find it curi­ous why so many get hung up on the sup­posed “con­flict” between sci­ence and reli­gion. The for­mer deals exclu­sive­ly with explo­ration of the phys­i­cal prop­er­ties of the nat­ur­al world. The lat­ter posits (based on rev­e­la­tion) that there exists some­thing out­side the nat­ur­al world (i.e., some­thing that, by def­i­n­i­tion, is not sub­ject to the sci­en­tif­ic method) which is respon­si­ble for the exis­tence of the nat­ur­al world and estab­lish­es its moral bound­aries. To argue that these con­cepts are in con­flict is like argu­ing that there is a con­flict between red and yel­low.

  • Josh Jones says:

    Seems to me the con­flict aris­es when cer­tain peo­ple insist that their par­tic­u­lar reli­gious ideas be taught as sci­ence, or flat­ly deny sci­en­tif­ic find­ings that con­flict with their meta­phys­i­cal beliefs. That’s where the “hang up” orig­i­nates. It’s a wide­spread cat­e­go­ry con­fu­sion that has very dele­te­ri­ous effects on sci­ence edu­ca­tion and pub­lic pol­i­cy.

  • Hanoch says:

    Agreed that reli­gion should not be taught as sci­ence. But asser­tions that reli­gion is incom­pat­i­ble with, or refut­ed by, sci­ence are equal­ly mis­guid­ed and dam­ag­ing. Sci­ence edu­ca­tion is not helped by either camp.

  • Robert Landbeclk says:

    “Our will­ing­ness to live with “doubt” par­tic­u­lar­ly on the God ques­tion, may be sim­ply that we have been con­di­tioned by cen­turies of reli­gious ortho­doxy and tra­di­tion to accept that there is no alter­na­tive. And thus no one is actu­al­ly look­ing for some­thing more pro­found than what an all too human the­o­log­i­cal process, that pre­sumes noth­ing greater, is able to pro­vide!

    That may all be about to change. As the first whol­ly new inter­pre­ta­tion for two thou­sand years of the Gospel and moral teach­ings of Christ has been pub­lished. Rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from any­thing else we know of from the­ol­o­gy or his­to­ry, this new teach­ing is pred­i­cat­ed upon the ‘promise’ of a pre­cise, pre­de­fined, pre­dictable and repeat­able expe­ri­ence of tran­scen­dent omnipo­tence and called ‘the first Res­ur­rec­tion’ in the sense that the Res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus was intend­ed to demon­strate Gods’ will­ing­ness to reveal Him­self and inter­vene direct­ly into the nat­ur­al world for those obe­di­ent to His will, paving the way for access, by faith, to the pow­er of divine Will and ulti­mate proof!

    Thus ‘faith’ becomes an act of trust in action, the search along a defined path of strict self dis­ci­pline, [a test of the human heart] to dis­cov­er His ‘Word’ of a direct indi­vid­ual inter­ven­tion into the nat­ur­al world by omnipo­tent pow­er that con­firms divine will, law, com­mand and covenant, which at the same time, realigns our mor­tal moral com­pass with the Divine, “cor­rect­ing human nature by a change in nat­ur­al law, alter­ing biol­o­gy, con­scious­ness and human eth­i­cal per­cep­tion beyond all nat­ur­al evo­lu­tion­ary bound­aries.” Thus is a man ‘cre­at­ed’ in the image and like­ness of his Cre­ator.

    So like it or no, a new reli­gious teach­ing, testable by faith, meet­ing all Enlight­en­ment cri­te­ria of evi­dence based cau­sa­tion and defin­i­tive proof now exists. Noth­ing short of an intel­lec­tu­al, moral and reli­gious rev­o­lu­tion is get­ting under way. To test or not to test, that is the ques­tion? More info at http://www.energon.org.uk

  • Ronny says:

    Speak­ing per­son­al­ly I have nev­er found the slight­est incom­pata­bil­i­ty between my faith and sci­ence. I believe it is fash­ion­able for some to regard the vocal fun­da­men­tal­ist minor­i­ty as speak­ing for all believ­ers.

  • X Silva says:

    Just ad hominem attacks.…. if you don’t like the mes­sage (cre­ation­ism), kill the messenger.nSpontaneous gen­er­a­tion, mul­ti­vers­es, every­thing out of noth­ing, punc­tu­at­ed equi­lib­ri­um, order orig­i­nat­ed from dis­or­der, muta­tions as part of the mech­a­nism for evo­lu­tion, redefini­ton of sci­ence to exclude the super­nat­ur­al, a the­o­ry that can­not be fal­si­fied or proven and that allows no oth­er the­o­ry to be put on dis­cus­sion, that sup­press­es the evi­dence that doesnu2019t fit the the­o­ry.… you call that sci­ence? I call that magik and an insult to sci­ence. Accord­ing to evolutionistu2019s def­i­n­i­tion, sci­ence should be an ide­ol­o­gy-free zone. Fol­low the evi­dence wher­ev­er it leads. ntThe reli­gion of athe­ism is being shoved down our childrenu2019s throats since extreme youth, but thank God, there are a few faith­ful men who resist and fight for com­mon sense and true sci­ence. They will be con­sid­ered heroes in the (near) future.n“In fact, evo­lu­tion became in a sense a sci­en­tif­ic reli­gion; almost all sci­en­tists have accept­ed it and many are pre­pared to u2019bend’ their obser­va­tions to fit in with it. “u2014H. Lip­son, “A Physi­cist Looks at Evo­lu­tion,” Physics Bul­letin 31 (1980), p. 138.n

  • X Silva says:

    Just ad hominem attacks.…. if you don’t like the mes­sage (cre­ation­ism), kill the messenger.nSpontaneous gen­er­a­tion, mul­ti­vers­es, every­thing out of noth­ing, punc­tu­at­ed equi­lib­ri­um, order orig­i­nat­ed from dis­or­der, muta­tions as part of the mech­a­nism for evo­lu­tion, redefini­ton of sci­ence to exclude the super­nat­ur­al, a the­o­ry that can­not be fal­si­fied or proven and that allows no oth­er the­o­ry to be put on dis­cus­sion, that sup­press­es the evi­dence that doesnu2019t fit the the­o­ry.… you call that sci­ence? I call that magik and an insult to sci­ence. Accord­ing to evolutionistu2019s def­i­n­i­tion, sci­ence should be an ide­ol­o­gy-free zone. Fol­low the evi­dence wher­ev­er it leads. ntThe reli­gion of athe­ism is being shoved down our childrenu2019s throats since extreme youth, but thank God, there are a few faith­ful men who resist and fight for com­mon sense and true sci­ence. They will be con­sid­ered heroes in the (near) future.n“In fact, evo­lu­tion became in a sense a sci­en­tif­ic reli­gion; almost all sci­en­tists have accept­ed it and many are pre­pared to u2019bend’ their obser­va­tions to fit in with it. “u2014H. Lip­son, “A Physi­cist Looks at Evo­lu­tion,” Physics Bul­letin 31 (1980), p. 138.n

  • IdPnSD says:

    All the­o­ries of math and physics have to be wrong. This is because all of them have the fol­low­ing struc­ture: (1) A set of assump­tions (2) A set of results and (3) A state­ment that says the results in item two will hold good only when items in one hold. But we all know that assump­tions are nev­er valid for engi­neer­ing and in nature. Thus no the­o­ries of sci­ence have ever been ver­i­fied by any engi­neer­ing exper­i­ments, because all engi­neer­ing exper­i­ments will auto­mat­i­cal­ly remove all assump­tions and thus inval­i­dat­ing the item three.

    On the oth­er hand all reli­gions must be true. All reli­gions talk about rein­car­na­tion, des­tiny, yogis, birth matu­ri­ty death process, eter­nal recur­rence, soul the­o­ry etc. There are many exam­ples of all of them in all reli­gions. Take a look at https://theoryofsouls.wordpress.com/ High lev­el yogis are there all over the world even now. Des­tiny the­o­ry is clear­ly men­tioned in Bible. Rein­car­na­tion was there in Bible but was removed lat­er. There are still many vers­es on rein­car­na­tion in Bible. Many men­tions of high lev­el yog­ic pow­ers are described in Judaism.

Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.