There is a certain man, a person who many young physicists have read about, respect, and even deified. Physics has many interesting characters, Newton, Faraday, Einstein, Gell-Mann..... Yet none quite like Richard P Feynman.

I've just finished the book "Feynman's Rainbow" by Leonard Mlodinow and it was a heartwarming read. I've read some of Feynman's lectures, and I've seen some of his memoirs on youtube, read some of it from books. He's perhaps one of the most quoted physicists apart from Einstein and that single Rutherford quote. I know people who think he's a demi-god.

What about myself? The many books on him, the memoirs, the lectures, the quotes.... they all reveal a certain something about his views and his character (that's what they're meant to do in the first place :p). His take on science, on physics and of learning is not a view that I agree with on all fronts. For example, he seems to believe that social sciences and psychology is bullshit. That doesn't sit too well in my gut for reasons that I myself am not exactly sure of (Perhaps it's because I hold a very simple yet idealistic definition that a science is the gaining of knowledge through enquiry and experiment. Yet, I am too ill-informed of the philosophies of science and it's history, not to mention patience, to know if that it requires more revision. In fact, the mere philosophising of science is something that Feynman himself would probably scorn.).

Feynman (in Mlodinow's book) describes two classes of thinkers. The Greeks, who focused on the underlying order of things, and the Babylonians, who focused on the phenomena and whether or not a theory described nature accurately. Feynman considered himself to be Babylonian. I suppose I fall into the Greek camp (whether or not this will change as I learn and discover more in science I do not know). I have this voice I cannot ignore in my head, telling me that even if I my intuition tells me I'm right about something, I ought to work out the mathematics (or logic) that bridges my intellect and intuition. It seems like a very pretentious thing to say considering that I'm a nothing in science (much less Physics), but I think I would have been one of those people who scorned the use of Feynman diagrams when they were invented. Or I would have at least tried to make mathematical sense of it.

Yet, Feynman has a certain quality about him. A certain heartwarming simplicity to his views which I respect and can only say Amen to.

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I suppose, for those of us who study physics at least, that whether we be Greek or Babylonian, we all are drawn to the beauty of that which we study - Nature.

The literature major searches for the beauty in written word, the art critic, that of sculptures and paintings. How different are the physicists? We look into things that are beyond what man has created. We search for the beauty in the Universe.

Feynman.... with his eccentricities, strong character and views.... I might not agree with all of them. I do not profess to know him. But from what I gather from his memoirs and works, the one thing I feel that always guided him, was the Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life. For that, Feynman will always be my hero.....

I have a marketing exam and a voice (theory) exam tmr. I don't have the lecture notes for 2 out of 5 of the lectures for voice, my marketing textbook is sitting closed next to me, "The Drunkard's Walk" by Leonard Mlodinow is open next to me, and I'm on Facebook, MSN, Outlook and XKCD.

Thank God I S/Ued marketing

For some reason, I found this really funny.... lol....

Everytime I watch him play, I feel like a complete guitar retard........

The adverts on the MRT nowadays perplex me.

It's a sofa.... wow... and it's supposed to be a beach....

And the recent Phua Chu Kang courtesy campaign irritates the hell out of me.