[breathes deep]
I already got 
that—whoa, hold on.
I said I wasn't able to 
get that one, and I—
Well, no, we already 
determined that it's because
I would need to be able to 
move, which I cannot do.
Yeah.
What's in this?
Is that a ventilation shaft?
Erp.
All right.
Also, weren't there 
some around here
that I didn't know how to solve?
Like that guy?
Okay.
All right.
'Show me the lesson 
that we should learn.'
All right, it looks like the
rotated version is this.
Yeah?
No?
I mean, that is what I've got.
Maybe there's a different way of
actually producing that result.
I didn't draw it 
backwards, did I?
Nope.
Also, I'm still distressed 
by how the puzzles
seem to be unusually quiet.
Okay, so that down, trace
the whole hexagon...
This direction, that 
direction, that direction...
And then went out.
>> RICHARD FEYNMAN: And so, by a
backhanded upside-down argument,
it was predicted that 
there is in carbon
a level at 7.82 million volts,
and then experiments in the 
laboratory with carbon
show indeed that there is.
And therefore the 
existence in the world
of all these other elements
is very closely 
related to the fact
that there is this 
particular level in carbon.
But the position of this 
particular level in carbon
seems to us, after knowing 
the physical laws,
to be a very 
complicated accident of
twelve complicated 
particles interacting.
So I used to illustrate, 
by this example,
that an understanding 
of the physical laws
doesn’t give an understanding 
in a... a sense of, uh,
understanding significance 
of the world in any way.
The details of real experience 
are very far, often,
from the fundamental laws.
There are, in a way of 
speaking in the world...
We have a way of discussing the 
world, which you could call, uh,
we discuss it at various 
hierarchies, or levels.
Now I don’t mean to 
be very precise, er,
this 'there’s a level, there’s 
another level,
'and another level,'
but I will indicate,
by describing a set 
of ideas to you,
just one after the other, 
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, 
who have, we believe,
their ultimate explanation in 
terms of the fundamental laws.
For instance, ‘heat’.
Heat is supposed to 
be the jiggling,
and it’s just a word for... 
'a hot thing' is just a word for
a mass of atoms 
which are jiggling.
Thought out fundamentally,
we should think of 
the atoms jiggling.
But for a while, if we’re 
talking about heat,
we sometimes forget about 
the atoms jiggling...
just like when we talk 
about the glacier
we don’t always think of the 
hexagonal ice snowflakes
which originally fell.
Another example of the same 
thing is a salt crystal.
Looked at fundamentally,
it’s a lot of protons, 
neutrons, and electrons.
But we have this 
concept ’salt crystal’,
which carries a whole 
pattern, already,
of fundamental interactions.
Or an idea like pressure.
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 the water tends 
to pull itself together,
is described by a number.
I remind you that we have to 
go through several laws down
to find out that it’s the 
pull of the atoms, and so on.
But we still say it’s
’surface tension’,
and don’t worry,
when we’re discussing 
surface tension,
of the inner workings, 
always—sometimes we do,
sometimes we don’t—
go on, up, in the hierarchy.
With the water we have the waves
and we have a thing like a storm,
we have a word ’storm’
which represents an enormous 
mass of phenomena.
Or ’sunspot’ or ’star’, which is
an accumulation of things.
And it’s not worthwhile always 
to think of it way back.
In fact we can’t, because 
the higher up we go,
we have too many 
steps in between,
each one of which 
is a little weak,
and we haven’t thought 
them all through yet.
And we go up in this 
hierarchy of complexity,
we get to things like 
'frog', or 'nerve impulse',
which, you see, is an 
enormously complicated thing
in the physical world, involving
an organization of matter
in a very elaborate complexity.
And then we go on, we come to 
things, words and concepts
like ’man’, and ’history’, 
or ’political expediency’,
[Musky and audience laugh]
and so forth,
which is a series of concepts
that we use to understand 
things at an ever-higher level.
And going on, we come to things 
like evil, and beauty, and hope.
Now which end is nearer 
to the ultimate creator,
or the Ultimate?
In this—if I make a
religious metaphor.
Which end is nearer to God?
Beauty and hope, or 
the fundamental laws?
I think that the right way, 
of course, is to say
the whole structural 
interconnections of the thing
is the thing that 
we have to look at,
and that the sequence 
of hierar—
that all the sciences 
and all the efforts,
not just the sciences but all 
the efforts of intellectual kind,
are to see the connections 
of the hierarchies,
is to connect beauty to history,
is to connect history 
to man’s psychology,
the 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 there’s no use 
making believe we can,
draw carefully a
line all the way
from one end of this 
thing to the other,
in fact we’ve just begun to see
that there is this 
relative hierarchy.
And so I don’t think either 
end is nearer to God’s.
And that to stand at either end,
and to walk out off the 
end of the pier only,
hoping 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.
And it is not sensible either,
for the ones who 
specialize at one end,
and the ones who specialize 
at the other end,
to have such disregard 
for each other.
[aside] They don’t actually, but 
the people say they do. Sorry.
[audience laughs]
But that actually,
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 connection,
this tremendous world of 
interconnecting hierarchies.
>> FEYNMAN: If you expected 
science to give all the answers
to the wonderful questions 
about what we are,
where we’re going,
what the meaning of the 
universe is and so on,
then I think you could 
easily become disillusioned
and then look for some mystic 
answer to these problems.
How a scientist can take a 
mystic answer I don’t know
because the whole spirit 
is to understand—
well, never mind that. Anyhow, 
I don’t understand that,
but anyhow if you think of it,
the way I think of what we’re 
doing is we’re exploring,
we’re trying to find out as 
much as we can about the world.
People say to me,
"Are you looking for the 
ultimate laws of physics?"
No, I’m not, I’m just looking 
to find out more about the world
and if it turns out there is
a simple ultimate law 
that explains everything,
so be it, that would be 
very nice to discover.
If it turns out it’s like an 
onion with millions of layers
and we’re just sick and tired 
of looking at the layers,
then that’s the way it is,
but whatever way it comes 
out its nature is there
and she’s going to come 
out the way she is, and
therefore when we go 
to investigate it
we shouldn’t pre-decide
what it is we’re trying to do
except to find out more about it.
If you said your problem is,
why do you find out 
more about it,
if you thought that you were 
trying to find out more about it
because you’re going 
to get an answer
to some deep 
philosophical question,
you may be wrong.
It may be that you 
can’t get an answer
to that particular question
by finding out more about 
the character of nature,
but I don’t look at it—
My interest in science is to 
simply find out about the world,
and the more I find 
out the better it is.
I like to find out.
There are very 
remarkable mysteries
about the fact that we’re able 
to do so many more things
than apparently animals can do, 
and other questions like that,
but those are mysteries 
I want to investigate
without knowing the 
answer to them.
And so altogether I can’t 
believe the special stories
that have been made up
about our relationship to
the universe at large
because... they seem to be...
too simple, too connected...
Too local! Too provincial! 
The earth, he came to the earth!
One of the aspects of God 
came to the earth, mind you,
and look at what’s out 
there. How can you —
It isn’t in proportion.
Anyway, it’s no use arguing, 
I can’t argue it,
I’m just trying to tell you why 
the scientific views that I have
do have some effect 
on my beliefs.
And also another thing
has to do with the question
of how do you find out 
if something’s true,
and if you have all
these theories,
if the different religions
have all different theories
about the thing,
then you begin to wonder.
Once you start doubting,
just like you’re 
supposed to doubt,
you ask me is the science true.
We say no no, we don’t 
know what’s true,
we’re trying to find out, 
everything is possibly wrong.
Start out understanding 
religion by saying
everything is possibly 
wrong; let us see.
As soon as you do that, you 
start sliding down an edge
which is hard to recover from.
And so with the scientific view,
well, my father’s view,
that we should look 
to see what’s true
and what maybe may not be true,
once you start doubting, 
which I think to me
is a very fundamental 
part of my soul,
is to doubt and to ask,
and when you doubt and ask it 
gets a little harder to believe.
You see, one thing is,
I can live with doubt and 
uncertainty and not knowing.
I think it’s much more 
interesting to live not knowing
than to have answers 
which might be wrong.
I have approximate answers 
and possible beliefs
and different degrees of 
certainty about different things,
but I’m not absolutely 
sure of anything
and there are many things 
I don’t know anything about,
such as whether it means
anything to ask why we’re here,
and what the 
question might mean.
I might think about 
it a little bit,
if I can’t figure it out, 
then I go to something else,
but I don’t have 
to know an answer.
I don’t feel frightened 
by not knowing things,
by being lost in the 
mysterious universe
without having any purpose,
which is the way it really 
is as far as I can tell.
Possibly.
It doesn’t frighten me.
>> MUSKY: [chuckles] All right.
That was a little bit 
more sensible, but, uh...
This implication that people 
choose religion because
they are frightened about 
not knowing things...
religions are full of 
things that you don't know.
And that they either 
keep asking about,
or sometimes they give 
up on, who knows.
All right.
Okay, so, I believe 
these are, like,
mechanical switches, 
if I recall.
And this is just...
Oh no, are they a forgiveness?
They're forgiveness, yeah.
It's correct.
It doesn't look correct, 
but it's correct.
And then this one...
Whoo!
[sighs]
It's not the same one, is it?
No.
Not quite.
Okay. So...
These guys fill up a... 
set of triangles.
These do not do that correctly.
That is not correct either.
Thaaat...?
Is not it but it's 
close, I think.
'Cause you have that...
Hold on.
Okay...
So we do this...
But the way to get...
That...
Almost.
No!
[sighs]
Okay, this has two too many...
This does not work...
Hey...! That does it.
All right.
Okay...
Interesting...
Ooh.
Oh, hey!
I've been here!
All right, we're back in town.
I already hit that, right? Yep.
Okay.
All right.
So this time I'm 
gonna take a break
before things get 
a bit too much.
I'll... be back in 
about five minutes.
Let's see here...
Actually, I'm totally failing 
to keep track of the time.
It's already the end 
of our time here.
[chuckles]
We were, uh, caught in it 
a little too much here.
I wanna thank y'all for hanging 
out, we will see y'all
again on Monday.
Hopefully we'll be able to
[sighs] 
continue making progress.
I know it's a little bit 
disconnected now, but... well.
That's what happens when 
we run into trouble,
we stop, and we look 
for something else.
[laughs softly]
Y'all have a great 
day out there.
