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From "Feynman's Lost Lecture"...

BeholdTheTruth

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Dr. Richard Feynman, Caltech...

"I am going to give what I will call an elementary demonstration. By elementary, does not mean easy to understand. Elementary means, that very little is required to know ahead of time in order to understand it, except to have an infinite amount of intelligence. It is not necessary to have knowledge, but to have intelligence in order to understand an elementary demonstration. There may be a large number of steps that are very hard to follow... By an elementary demonstration, I mean one that goes as far back as one can with regard to how much has to be learned."
 
Hi There Yale. Posting in the science section again? Can we cut out the 40 or 50 posts of absolute confusion and just cut straight to the religion bit?

Remember, just because people cannot follow you doesn't mean you operate on a higher level of understanding, It just means you cannot get to the point in under 50 posts.
 
That's what we need more of, Feynman. Where's Feynman when you need him?

First thing I thought of when I heard about Columbia. :(

There's what cancer does. Kills Gould, Sagan (screw technicalities), and Fermi.
 
Hey Yale, back for round four? Good on ya.

Hell, with that East/West coast, Morning person/night owl thing, I probably won't get back to the reply till tomorrow night.

Oh well, let the games begin. :p
 
The Fool said:
Hi There Yale. Posting in the science section again? Can we cut out the 40 or 50 posts of absolute confusion and just cut straight to the religion bit?
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:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D...
 
The Fool said:
Hi There Yale. Posting in the science section again? Can we cut out the 40 or 50 posts of absolute confusion and just cut straight to the religion bit?

Remember, just because people cannot follow you doesn't mean you operate on a higher level of understanding, It just means you cannot get to the point in under 50 posts.
Click to expand...

Hi Fool.

I could be wrong, but I think Feynman is saying that to follow an elementary demonstration IS to operate on a lower, i.e., more primitive/primary level of understanding. And that by operating without the added baggage that comes with being at a more conventional higher level of understanding, relationships can be seen that cannot be seen at, and indeed can be obscured by, that higher level of yours.
 
Yalel said:


Hi Fool.

I could be wrong, but I think Feynman is saying that to follow an elementary demonstration IS to operate on a lower, i.e., more primitive/primary level of understanding. And that by operating without the added baggage that comes with being at a more conventional higher level of understanding, relationships can be seen that cannot be seen at, and indeed can be obscured by, that higher level of yours.
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You are wrong.

He was discussing some aspects of mechanics when he said this. He meant what he said, the demonstration did not require much prior knowledge for follow, but simply intelligence.

He wasn't suggesting that other knowledge or understanding would get in the way of understanding this idea, just that it was not needed.

But, either way.... it was not something easy to follow.

Instead of trying to guess what he meant by those words, why didn't you keep reading and follow the demonstration? You would know exactly what was meant after that, as you would have had a context for the statement.

Specifically, the demonstration could be understood using only the tools of basic geometry.... it did not require a large foreknowledge of advanced math or other physical processes.
 
Once upon a time, Yalel posted
Aard,

Cleverness has nothing to do with it. It's just a matter of being duck-headed or pig-headed.

BTW, for all you duck-heads out there: the hodograph material is well decribed in Goodstein and Goodstein's book Feynman's Lost Lecture -- should any of your ducks be interested in seeing the physics of the earth in an elliptical orbit from a non infinitesimal calculus point of view. Plus I have added some animations about hodographs at the botom of http://theometry.org/envelope.htm .
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Behold the Yalel, who is constantly searching for validation via the work of notable scientists who are now dead.

Strange that someone who is so sure that many of us are morons keeps coming back, and back, and back to bounce his ideas around to test their resonance.

In any event, here is some data that may help to the one who is still trying to determine just what the 'arc' in 'arctangent' is:

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Thanks, guys, for the heads up. I did some searching and can very clearly see what you mean.
 
I looked the book over via an on-line bookstore (the one named after that big river in South America), and the book does look quite interesting and for someone like me, it may be quite useful.

Essentially, Feynman developed a way using simple plane geometry to describe orbital mechanics. The data may be useful to those teaching Newtonian physics because it does not use the calculus approach that is usually used and most students find geometry much easier to understand than math.

However, I have a great deal of other stuff to study at the moment, so I will see about reading it this summer when I go back to a regular schedule.
 
Yalel said:
CB, read it when you can. It's even better than the reviews. Regards, yale
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yale.
How did your talks go? Have you been invited back?
 
Fool,

Thank's for asking. But I am not going to go there. This topic is purely about Feynman's Lost Lecture. Have you read the book or do you plan to? It really is quite wonderful. Yale
 
Yalel said:
Fool,

Thank's for asking. But I am not going to go there. This topic is purely about Feynman's Lost Lecture. Have you read the book or do you plan to? It really is quite wonderful. Yale
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No I've not read it. I'm not going to either...things are very busy lately. I don't really share your fascination for things traveling in arcs.:) But I'm always fascinated how you reduce everything (eventually) to the golden rule.
 
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