A lesson physics students can learn from
Richard Feynman.
Richard Feynman was an American theoretical
physicist who shared the 1965 Nobel Prize for his work in quantum
electrodynamics and spent much of his career teaching at Caltech.
In a 1966 talk, Feynman recalled walking
through the woods with his father. Another child knew the name of a bird, but
Feynman had learned that knowing its name, even in several languages, revealed
nothing about how the bird lived. Instead, he and his father watched its
behaviour, proposed explanations and checked them against observation.
Later in the same talk, Feynman remembered
his father asking how an atom could emit a photon that had not already been
inside it. Despite studying at MIT and Princeton, Feynman admitted that he
could not explain it. He did not hide the gap behind technical language.
Definitions were necessary tools, Feynman
said, but knowing them was not yet science. He tried to find the exact point
where words ended and understanding began.
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這段英文是推特上樓主，Philosophy Of Physics，@PhilosophyOfPhy，推出的一段記載理論物理學家費曼的故事。
費曼是二十世紀著名的理論物理學家，他因為對於量子電動力學的貢獻而於一九六五年獲得諾貝爾物理獎。上面那段話記載的是一九六六年，他在一次對學習物理的學生的演講中的回憶故事。
在物理課上，費曼回憶了兒時與父親一起在森林中散步的經歷。對於林中飛鳥，有一個孩子知道它的名字，但費曼明白，哪怕知道鳥的幾種語言名字也不是知道鳥。於是他和父親開始觀察鳥的行爲，提出解釋，然後又用觀察來檢驗他們的這些解釋。
為此，費曼說：
