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

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just great. But you have to have absolute confidence. Keep right on going, and nothing will happen. One time I came home from college for a vacation, and my sister was sort of unhappy, almost crying: her Girl Scouts were having a fatherdaughter banquet, but our father was out on the road, selling uniforms. So I said I would take her, being the brother (I'm nine years older, so it wasn't so crazy). When we got there, I sat among the fathers for a while, but soon became sick of them. All these fathers bring their daughters to this nice little banquet, and all they talked about was the stock market they don't know how to talk to their own children, much less their children's friends. During the banquet the girls entertained us by doing little skits, reciting poetry, and so on. Then all of a sudden they bring out this funnylooking apronlike thing, with a hole at the top to put your head through. The girls announce that the fathers are now going to entertain them. So each father has to get up and stick his head through and say something one guy recites "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and they don't know what to do. I didn't know what to do either, but by the time I got up there, I told them that I was going to recite a little poem, and I'm sorry that it's not in English, but I'm sure they will appreciate it anyway: A TUZZO LANTO Poici di Pare TANto SAca TULna Tl, na PUta TUchi PUti Tl la. RUNto CAta CHANtp CHANta MANto CHI la Tl da. YALta CAra SULda MI la CHAta PIcha PIno TIto BRALda pe te CHIna nana CHUNda Ida CHINda Ida CHUNda! RONto piti CA le, a TANto CHlNto quinta LALda O la TINta dalla LALta, YENta PUcha lalla TALta! I do this for three or four stanzas, going through all the emotions that I heard on Italian radio, and the kids are unraveled, rolling in the aisles, laughing with happiness. After the banquet was over, the scoutmaster and a schoolteacher came over and told me they had been discussing my poem. One of them thought it was Italian, and the other thought it was Latin. The schoolteacher asks, "Which one of us is right?" I said, "You'll have to go ask the girls they understood what language it was right away." Always Trying to Escape When I was a student at MIT I was interested only in science; I was no good at anything else. But at MIT there was a rule: You have to take some humanities courses to get more "culture." Besides the English classes required were two electives, so I looked through the list, and right away I found astronomy as a humanities course! So that year I escaped with astronomy. Then next year I looked further down the list, past French literature and courses like that, and found philosophy. It was the closest thing to science I
could find. Before I tell you what happened in philosophy, let me tell you about the English class. We had to write a number of themes. For instance, Mill had written something on liberty, and we had to criticize it. But instead of addressing myself to political liberty, as Mill did, I wrote about liberty in social occasions the problem of having to fake and lie in order to be polite, and does this perpetual game of faking in social situations lead to the "destruction of the moral fiber of society." An interesting question, but not the one we were supposed to discuss. Another essay we had to criticize was by Huxley, "On a Piece of Chalk," in which he describes how an ordinary piece of chalk he is holding is the remains from animal bones, and the forces inside the earth lifted it up so that it became part of the White Cliffs, and then it was quarried and is now used to convey ideas through writing on the blackboard. But again, instead of criticizing the essay assigned to us, I wrote a parody called, "On a Piece of Dust," about how dust makes the colors of the sunset and precipitates the rain, and so on. I was always a faker, always trying to escape. But when we had to write a theme on Goethe's Faust, it was hopeless! The work was too long to make a parody of it or to invent something else. I was storming back and forth in the fraternity saying, "I can't do it. I'm just not gonna do it. I ain't gonna do it!" One of my fraternity brothers said, "OK, <strong>Feynman</strong>, you're not gonna do it. But the professor will think you didn't do it because you don't want to do the work. You oughta write a theme on something same number of words and hand it in with a note saying that you just couldn't understand the Faust, you haven't got the heart for it, and that it's impossible for you to write a theme on it." So I did that. I wrote a long theme, "On the Limitations of Reason." I had thought about scientific techniques for solving problems, and how there are certain limitations: moral values cannot be decided by scientific methods, yak, yak, yak, and so on. Then another fraternity brother offered some more advice. "<strong>Feynman</strong>," he said, "it ain't gonna work, handing in a theme that's got nothing to do with Faust. What you oughta do is work that thing you wrote into the Faust." "Ridiculous!" I said. But the other fraternity guys think it's a good idea. "All right, all right!" I say, protesting. "I'll try." So I added half a page to what I had already written, and said that Mephistopheles represents reason, and Faust represents the spirit, and Goethe is trying to show the limitations of reason. I stirred it up, cranked it all in, and handed in my theme. The professor had us each come in individually to discuss our theme. I went in expecting the worst. He said, "The introductory material is fine, but the Faust material is a bit too brief. Otherwise, it's very good B+ ." I escaped again! Now to the philosophy class. The course was taught by an old bearded professor named Robinson, who always mumbled. I would go to the class, and he would mumble along, and I couldn't understand a thing. The other people in the class seemed to understand him better, but they didn't seem to pay any attention. I happened to have a small drill, about onesixteenthinch, and to pass the time in that class, I would twist it between my fingers and drill holes in the sole of my shoe, week after week.
Page 1 and 2: "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Page 3 and 4: Preface The stories in this book we
Page 5 and 6: He Fixes Radios by Thinking! Part 1
Page 7 and 8: could act like a microphone, and yo
Page 9 and 10: whole afternoon to find a burnedo
Page 11 and 12: For logarithms it was a big L exten
Page 13 and 14: very sharp knife into the table at
Page 15 and 16: and be more relaxed, and vice versa
Page 17 and 18: One time I danced with a certain gi
Page 19 and 20: same waitress all the time. I notic
Page 21: "Cut it out, Feynman; this is seri
Page 25 and 26: observations were made while I was
Page 27 and 28: I decided there must be an "interpr
Page 29 and 30: company. His father was the one who
Page 31 and 32: we could do. Our process was pretty
Page 33 and 34: out of me, because I didn't like fo
Page 35 and 36: In the Princeton cyclotron lab they
Page 37 and 38: When it was time to get up and go o
Page 39 and 40: and animal, are made of little bric
Page 41 and 42: some other experiment. I said, "Hel
Page 43 and 44: We figured if we could get rid of t
Page 45 and 46: do?" I said I didn't know, and he s
Page 47 and 48: always something I could find in th
Page 49 and 50: Atlantic City, where they had vario
Page 51 and 52: though it was a microscope of forty
Page 53 and 54: lowing" it occurred. I followed eig
Page 55 and 56: I asked the Bell Labs if they would
Page 57 and 58: the fuse won't burn! I decided that
Page 59 and 60: that he wanted to try to develop. H
Page 61 and 62: Mexico," the man says, "Oh, so all
Page 63 and 64: meantime, what instructions go down
Page 65 and 66: said, "No codes." So I wrote back t
Page 67 and 68: I looked at it and said, "That look
Page 69 and 70: people that I wanted were there, an
Page 71 and 72: different where you go first t
Page 73 and 74:
concentrate on this one. So they st
Page 75 and 76:
it was very difficult. Now, us
Page 77 and 78:
was radioactive. It was plutonium.
Page 79 and 80:
One guy tries to make something to
Page 81 and 82:
Everybody was amazed. It was comple
Page 83 and 84:
it appeared, depends on the same li
Page 85 and 86:
Hoffman is just the kind of guy to
Page 87 and 88:
mathematical constant?" "Oh, no!" d
Page 89 and 90:
of little cubbyholes that contained
Page 91 and 92:
himself! So I turn around, and sure
Page 93 and 94:
"No. Do you?" "Well, I'm keeping an
Page 95 and 96:
partly in the strength of our futur
Page 97 and 98:
have any room either. I say to the
Page 99 and 100:
answered the questions. Everything
Page 101 and 102:
around faster than the wobbling. I
Page 103 and 104:
ar, with all its "temptations," and
Page 105 and 106:
level. . . "Excuse me, sir," I say,
Page 107 and 108:
I liked to imitate being drunk, so
Page 109 and 110:
you been?" At this moment the guy t
Page 111 and 112:
"What?" "That's right," he said con
Page 113 and 114:
After that, I tried to do those thi
Page 115 and 116:
He was completely washed out, and l
Page 117 and 118:
Monday, at the latest. I got all up
Page 119 and 120:
The people from the airlines were s
Page 121 and 122:
The boss said, "Where're you from?"
Page 123 and 124:
eaches, where most people felt thei
Page 125 and 126:
super: He answered everything nifty
Page 127 and 128:
y first learning to pronounce the l
Page 129 and 130:
Certainly, Mr. Big! I used to cross
Page 131 and 132:
We were eating breakfast in the din
Page 133 and 134:
"That must have been it," I said. I
Page 135 and 136:
some kind of big pain, and it start
Page 137 and 138:
the two piles of hay, with the extr
Page 139 and 140:
I must refuse. The reason I have to
Page 141 and 142:
hotel. I pushed open the doors and
Page 143 and 144:
"Well, yes. . ." "Hoompf." And that
Page 145 and 146:
something like, "May I observe your
Page 147 and 148:
in fact, a prediction on top of wha
Page 149 and 150:
"The one from SoandSo's book."
Page 151 and 152:
government, or else I can't talk in
Page 153 and 154:
et Jerry that he wouldn't be able t
Page 155 and 156:
at the paper. Don't take your eyes
Page 157 and 158:
She told me this story: She and her
Page 159 and 160:
were these fluorescent colors on bl
Page 161 and 162:
they came back and bought it. So th
Page 163 and 164:
with the artists from time to time
Page 165 and 166:
understand," and everybody else wou
Page 167 and 168:
way to understand ethical problems
Page 169 and 170:
families all the time, so that if a
Page 171 and 172:
that they called "new math," and si
Page 173 and 174:
awful! All it was was a game to get
Page 175 and 176:
then there was something else. And
Page 177 and 178:
one. Then the question came up, "Wi
Page 179 and 180:
I got that shock about three or fou
Page 181 and 182:
had been brought up by my father ag
Page 183 and 184:
She turned to me and said, "Oh! You
Page 185 and 186:
astronomy. *When I was a young prof
Page 187 and 188:
After the colloquium at UCLA Profes
Page 189 and 190:
So the fella who'd been talking to
Page 191 and 192:
andleader said, "Geez! Who was that
Page 193 and 194:
who had come out at the beginning o
Page 195 and 196:
"This is the place," the receptioni
Page 197 and 198:
my way down again. At first it took
Page 199 and 200:
external to the internal psychologi
Page 201 and 202:
people with commonsense ideas are i
Page 203 and 204:
think to laymen. For example, I was
Page 205:
to have such a policy in teaching
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"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - unam.

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