Which End Is Closer To God?
Richard Feynman
We have a way of discussing the world, when we talk of it at various
hierarchies, or levels. Now I do not mean to be very precise, dividing the
world into definite levels, but I will indicate, by describing a set of ideas,
what I mean by hierarchies of ideas.
For example, at
one end we have the fundamental laws of physics. Then we invent other terms for
concepts which are approximate, which have, we believe, their ultimate
explanation in terms of the fundamental laws. For instance, "heat". Heat
is supposed to be jiggling, and the word for a hot thing is just the word for a
mass of atoms which are jiggling. But for a while, if we are talking about
heat, we sometimes forget about the atoms jiggling- just as when we talk about
the glacier we do not always think of the hexagonal ice and the snowflakes
which originally fell. Another example of the same thing is a salt crystal. Looked
at fundamentally it is a lot of protons, neutrons, and electrons; but we have
this concept of "salt crystal", which carries a whole pattern already
of fundamental interactions. An idea like pressure is the same.
Now if we go
higher up from this, in another level we have properties of substances- like
"refractive index", how light is bent when it goes through something;
or "surface tension", the fact that water tends to pull itself
together, both of which are described by numbers. I remind you that we have to
go through several laws down to find out that it is the pull of the atoms, and
so on. But we still say "surface tension", and do not always worry,
when discussing surface tension, about the inner workings.
On, up in the
hierarchy. With the water we have waves, and we have a thing like a storm, the
word "storm" which represents an enormous mass of phenomena, or a
"sun spot", or "star", which is an accumulation of things. And
it is not worthwhile always to think of it way back. In fact we cannot, because
the higher up we go the more steps we have in between, each one of which is a
little weak. We have not thought them all through yet.
As we go up in
this hierarchy of complexity, we get to things like muscle twitch, or nerve
impulse, which is an enormously complicated thing in the physical world, involving
an organization of matter in a very elaborate complexity. Then come things like
"frog".
And then we go
on, and we come to words and concepts like "man", and
"history", or "political expediency", and so forth, a
series of concepts which we use to understand things at an ever higher level.
And going on, we
come to things like evil, and beauty, and hope...
Which end is
nearer to God, if I may use a religious metaphor, beauty and hope, or the
fundamental laws? I think that the right way, of course, is to say that what we
have to look at is the whole structural interconnection of the thing; and that
all the sciences, and not just the sciences but all the efforts of intellectual
kinds, are an endeavor to see the connections of the hierarchies, to connect
beauty to history, to connect history to man's psychology, man's psychology to
the working of the brain, the brain to the neural impulse, the neural impulse
to the chemistry, and so forth, up and down, both ways. And today we cannot,
and it is no use making believe that we can, draw carefully a line all the way
from one end of this thing to the other, because we have only just begun to see
that there is this relative hierarchy.
And I do not
think either end is nearer to God. To stand at either end, and to walk off that
end of the pier only, hoping that out in that direction is the complete
understanding, is a mistake. And to stand with evil and beauty and hope, or to
stand with the fundamental laws, hoping that way to get a deep understanding of
the whole world, with that aspect alone, is a mistake. It is not sensible for
the ones who specialize at the other end, to have such disregard for each
other. (They don't actually, but people say they do.) The great mass of workers
in between, connecting one step to another, are improving all the time our
understanding of the world, both from working at the ends and working in the
middle, and in that way we are gradually understanding this tremendous world of
interconnecting hierarchies.
Richard P. Feynman was a scientist, teacher, raconteur, and musician. He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb, expanded the understanding of quantum electrodynamics, translated Mayan hieroglyphics, and cut to the heart of the Challenger disaster. But beyond all of that, Richard Feynman was a unique and multi-faceted individual.
