Discovery(*)

"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"(24).

-Richard Feynman

For my first research book, I readThe Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard Feynman. The book is comprised of a collection of his short stories, and they are all quite thought-provoking. For those of you that may not know, Richard Feynman was a scientist that worked on the atomic bomb, is often cited as having launched the field of nanotechnology, and won a Nobel Prize for his work in quantum electrodynamics. He's also notorious for his peculiar brand of english, often called "Feynmanese". I would highly recommend the book to anyone, no matter your knowledge about science, but I do think that those that have a basic grasp of physics, computing, rocketry, and chemistry will probably get more out of the book than those who don't. Some chapters are quite high level in their discourse, yet others are universally readable.

One of the things that really threw me for a loop about The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is that Feynman asserts that the only true way of behaving scientifically is disbelieving everything, and then trying to find things out for oneself. My previous belief system was centered around the idea that science made everything certain for me. The laws of science predict certain outcomes, and those outcomes are sure to be credible, even if the outcomes themselves are not certain, due to probabilistic physics. I believed in this system. But I think I was wrong, and I feel that Feynman's system of disbelieving everything, and then discovering the unknown is much closer to the scientific method. In any case, the notion of a constant voyage in discovering the unknown is much more inspiring to me. But the seemingly inherent uncertainty of science has profound implications for the role of science in society as a whole. Just from a common sense standpoint, it seems to me like there is an inherent drive in everyone to seek certainty. Certainty leads to an easier life, because one is more certain to receive basic necessities. So, upon reflection, I think that there may be a causation between why society today is so unscientific with authority figures dictating orders, and citizens following them, all in order to gain stable lives, and the uncertainty of science. I'd go so far as to assert that the entire idea of the social contract, with certain freedoms taken away for other guaranteed certain outcomes, seems to be predicated upon certainty. Strangely, the idea of uncertainty is somewhat liberating to me. Accepting uncertainty, it becomes much more okay to live in the moment. So I suppose that's why, despite the complete shredding of my system of certainty by logical argument on Feynman's part, I'm not feeling too shaken up. I can't say I've always loved the unknown. In fact, I seem to constantly combat it. However, I still agree with Feynman that the thrill of discovering the unknown is much more substantial than having "certain" rules dictated in my direction. His view of science is that it "there is the beauty and the wonder of the world that is discovered through the results of [the scientific method]"(185). This is his central thesis: that the pleasure of finding things out is from knowing how they work first hand. This is heartening, because most of my computer science learning and experience has been first hand (project-based).

Feynman's idea of uncertainty's role in science is particularly interesting when taken in another direction, that of computer science. On the one hand, almost the entirety of my learning about how programming works was based off of the mantra of "I don't know if this will work. Let's find out!" I fail all the time in my attempts to design certain aspects of a program, but I give those designs a shot in the first place because I have a hypothesis they might work, and then I discover the unknown result when I run the program. It's learning by doing. This is the most direct and instantaneous type of the scientific method there is. My claims are always confirmed or disproved almost immediately; they are never in any sort of theoretical limbo. On the other hand, I hesitate to call Computer Science a science at all. There is no true uncertainty in classical(non-quantum) (excepting single event upsets, and parallel processing/multicore operations) computing, for my uncertainty is only really for lack of research into the systems I program on, and the structures I program. Given enough time, I feel that I could feasibly determine the outcome of any program: I could trace through it. Thus, this lack of uncertainty makes computer science less of a science and more of a form of mathematics.

During one chapter of The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, Feynman talks about a topic that hits very close to home in relation to my third space. He discusses nanotechnology in a widely disseminated short paper entitled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom". It is a weird feeling, for sure, to realize that I am currently working in a lab that designs micro-robots far smaller than those that he challenges the reader to build. I am filled with the sense that today, I seem to live in a future very close to the one Feynman predicted, but not only that, I am working in the field that Feynman helped to kickstart. To summarize the chapter, he mainly speaks about how there are no true physical laws that prohibit the dramatic downsizing of both computational devices and mechanical ones, specifically motors, though some laws do become a slight problem, meaning that the motors themselves would have to be redesigned for a smaller scale, but that "[he] can see no reason why [microscopic motors] can't be designed to work again"(130). I work with the redesigned motors he spoke of, specifically, electrostatic actuators. Biology is another area that Feynman talks about which I am not directly involved in, but my peer, Veronika, is. He predicts correctly the rapid biotech advances made possible by increasing computational power. He would have marveled at CRISPR CAS-9, which is a popular genome editing technique developed in recent years. In any case, we are both carrying out the work he predicted.

I think that by reading The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, I've gained a new appreciation for the micro-robotics work that my third space carries out, and now, despite having a drive to do so earlier, I absolutely want to research the actual physics behind the micro-robotics, in the hopes of getting a better understanding of that. Unfortunately, when it comes to micro-robotics, not only do I know next to nothing about the physics behind it, and the mechanisms on the robots, but I also likely do not possess the mathematical background necessary to actually be able to understand it in the first place. So it would seem that the odds are stacked against me on developing a more comprehensive knowledge. However, I have yet to develop a concrete goal specifically about building or developing any sort of micro-robot. This is great, because it means that any quest for knowledge in nanotechnology does not come with the usual trappings of my projects (like self imposed deadlines and discouragement) and I can just go for it, because if I look at this learning from a "Failure is not physically possible, because there's nothing for me to fail" viewpoint, then I can have a ball with it. I think that's just what I'll do. Unfortunately, there's one more catch. At this point, I've spread my goals so diffusely that my means to accomplish them are similarly diffuse. In other words, I have so many different objectives at once, I don't really know which ones I should dedicate my time to, and I don't have enough time to dedicate to all of them. I don't have the solution to this problem. So there's a little bit of uncertainty in my life.

Maybe it's the two-one punch of OPI and The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, but I'm feeling rather optimistic, and I hope I can find a way to continue to navigate and manage my myriad interests. There's certainly pleasure in finding anything out.

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Works Cited

Feynman, Richard P., Jeffrey Robbins, and Freeman J. Dyson. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman. London: Penguin, 2007. Print.