Notes on The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard Feynman

I just finished reading The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard Feynman. I greatly enjoyed the first three books of his that I read before, and this one was no different.

There's certainly a lot of overlap between the books, but you can never get enough of the honesty and wisdom that's on every page of his writing. His love of science, the curiosity and questioning spirit that his dad instilled in him, and his quirky personality all ring true in this book as well.

Below are my major takeaways and notes on the book.

---

• ​Knowing the name of something is very different from knowing the thing 
• Translate what you read into what it really means in reality
• Father read encyclopedia to him and help him translate into the living room what it meant
• Understanding how flower works makes it even more beautiful
• Disrespect for respectable things simply due to their uniforms
• Doesn't like honors
• Real incentive is pleasure of finding things out and having others use what you made
• Create myth that you're irresponsible so u don't get administrative trivia to do and can concentrate on your work
• Doubt and ask and be ok living not knowing
• Family wrote letters in code without sending the key so he could practice cracking
• Important for technical people to know what they are doing and have transparency
• Doubt is key to science
• Observe world around you and ask questions of what you see and try to test their ties with observation
• Don't focus on definitions; to test understanding try to describe process without using definition word
• Science is about trying not to fool yourself and brutal honesty with others why you might be wrong
• Long walks in woods with father talking about animals and trees and atoms and stars
• Suppose Martians came down and saw us. What would they think? How would they understand us?
• What makes things work? Take them apart and look. 
• Scientist must doubt and have uncertainty in order to experiment and learn
• Learning about world and satisfying curiosity is end in itself