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Feynman’s Rigor « the jsomers.net blog

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All of the things I admire about Richard Feynman -- his intellect, and verve, and eloquence -- seem like special cases of a more general feature of his mind, namely, its almost fanatical devotion to rigor. Here's an example of what I mean, taken from a wonderful essay, "Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine": Concentrating on the algorithm for a basic arithmetic operation was typical of Richard's approach. He loved the details. In studying the router, he paid attention to the action of each individual gate and in writing a program he insisted on understanding the implementation of every instruction. He distrusted abstractions that could not be directly related to the facts. When several years later I wrote a general interest article on the Connection Machine for [Scientific American], he was disappointed that it left out too many details. He asked, "How is anyone supposed to know that this isn't just a bunch of crap?" Feynman would only claim to know something if he knew he knew i

Feynman&#8217;s Rigor << the jsomers.net blog the jsomers.net blog. About Subscribe Read More Contact me Feynman&#8217;s Rigor by James Somers , March 2, 2009 All of the things I admire about Richard Feynman -- his intellect, and verve, and eloquence -- seem like special cases of a more general feature of his mind, namely, its almost fanatical devotion to rigor. Here's an example of what I mean, taken from a wonderful essay, " Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine ": Concentrating on the algorithm for a basic arithmetic operation was typical of Richard's approach. He loved the details. In

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