"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - unam.

a new world view, how it gives man the ability to do things, how it gives him power ­­
and the question is, in view of the recent development of the atomic bomb, is it a good
idea to give man that much power? I also thought about the relation of science and
religion, and it was about this time when I was invited to a conference in New York that
was going to discuss "the ethics of equality."
There had already been a conference among the older people, somewhere on
Long Island, and this year they decided to have some younger people come in and discuss
the position papers they had worked out in the other conference.
Before I got there, they sent around a list of "books you might find interesting to
read, and please send us any books you want others to read, and we will store them in the
library so that others may read them."
So here comes this wonderful list of books. I start down the first page: I haven't
read a single one of the books, and I feel very uneasy ­­ I hardly belong. I look at the
second page: I haven't read a single one. I found out, after looking through the whole list,
that I haven't read any of the books. I must be an idiot, an illiterate! There were
wonderful books there, like Thomas Jefferson On Freedom, or something like that, and
there were a few authors I had read. There was a book by Heisenberg, one by
Schrodinger, and one by Einstein, but they were something like Einstein, My Later Fears
and Schrodinger, What Is Life ­­ different from what I had read. So I had a feeling that I
was out of my depth, and that I shouldn't be in this. Maybe I could just sit quietly and
listen.
I go to the first big introductory meeting, and a guy gets up and explains that we
have two problems to discuss. The first one is fogged up a little bit ­­ something about
ethics and equality, but I don't understand what the problem exactly is. And the second
one is, "We are going to demonstrate by our efforts a way that we can have a dialogue
among people of different fields." There was an international lawyer, a historian, a Jesuit
priest, a rabbi, a scientist (me), and so on.
Well, right away my logical mind goes like this: The second problem I don't have
to pay any attention to, because if it works, it works; and if it doesn't work, it doesn't
work ­­ we don't have to prove that we can have a dialogue, and discuss that we can have
a dialogue, if we haven't got any dialogue to talk about! So the primary problem is the
first one, which I didn't understand.
I was ready to put my hand up and say, "Would you please define the problem
better," but then I thought, "No, I'm the ignoramus; I'd better listen. I don't want to start
trouble right away."
The subgroup I was in was supposed to discuss the "ethics of equality in
education." In the meetings of our subgroup the Jesuit priest was always talking about
"the fragmentation of knowledge." He would say, "The real problem in the ethics of
equality in education is the fragmentation of knowledge." This Jesuit was looking back
into the thirteenth century when the Catholic Church was in charge of all education, and
the whole world was simple. There was God, and everything came from God; it was all
organized. But today, it's not so easy to understand everything. So knowledge has
become fragmented. I felt that "the fragmentation of knowledge" had nothing to do with
"it," but "it" had never been defined, so there was no way for me to prove that.
Finally I said, "What is the ethical problem associated with the fragmentation of
knowledge?" He would only answer me with great clouds of fog, and I'd say, "I don't