On the value of scientific doubt

Dear Friends:?The works of physicist Richard P Feynman (1918-1988) are a marvel. ?He is considered one of the most innovative and important physicists of all time. He conducted pioneering work in quantum electrodynamics (QED) and his work in clarifying the role of matter and light brought him a Nobel Prize.

His adventurer spirit was applied with equal passion to communicating complex ideas to millions of non-scientists. ?His public lectures were not just communication, they were opportunities to create new ways of thinking. His public presence gave rise to new disciplines, including nanoscience which he is known as the first to suggest, in public lecture. ?

Often described as the great Explainer he lived life large and believed we were only at the very beginning of discovery of the smallest measures of matter on the nano level.

A few of the intellectual and moral challenges he took on, were:

·?????how to approach a scientific problem

·?????the freedom to doubt

Regarding approaching scientific problems, he developed a way to breaking ideas down step by step while optimally keeping curiosity open, alive. ?As you probably know The Feynman Technique is widely used today across disciplines. It consists of a few deceivingly simple steps:

Step 1: Learning requires starting – don’t be afraid, try. Read, read, read and think through what you’ve read. Continue thinking through what you’ve learned.

Step 2: Document everything you’re learning.?Document as if you’re going to teach your son or daughter, as if you’re going to deliver a lecture to curious 7-year-olds.?

a)????Write down from memory everything you can that you’ve been reading/researching in a notebook

b)???Find gaps to your memory against what you’ve read

c)????List the gaps, list what you don’t know

Step 3: Be the child in your lecture – ask questions, ask the Why as if you’re the curious child in the audience with hand raised.

a)????Question what you’ve written

b)???Know different angles to what you are teaching there are many children asking such questions.

c)????Go deeper, repeat

Step 4: Redo step 3 until you have exhausted the “Why” and the gaps in your approach to your topic

The Feynman Technique has been so successful it is commonplace today. It is assumed to be a natural part of good engineering and scientific problem formulation.

Regarding the freedom to doubt, in a classic Feynman lecture in 1955 “The Value of Science” he advocates for a certain type of freedom to doubt that I feel we all wish to preserve.?He states:

I would now like to turn to a third value that science has. It is the little more indirect, but not much. The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of vary great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize the ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty – some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.?Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure – that it is possible to live and not to know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes that this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and long struggle. Permit us to question – to doubt, that’s all – not to be sure. And I think it is important that we do not forget this importance of this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained. Here lies the responsibility to society.

In our highly politicizing time for science, I wanted to share Feynman’s call to action in support of scientific freedom not only for scientific knowing but for scientific freedom to doubt, to not know.

Feynman is reminding us that to not know is the muse of invention. ?I feel it is sometimes worth reminding ourselves (myself) of this and the shoulders of invention we stand on.

#nanoscience, #science, #scientificdiscovery, #freedom, #learning