Which is good, because I was not awed by the author's name. I think
very highly of Feynman and might have been swayed to doubt my
judgement rather than my experience. Guess this is why blind peer
review is an awesome thing.
Of course I'm possibly too dumb to appreciate majestic poetry. Or it
worked in 1974 in a way that fails now. Or we read different articles.
It's actually a writing style I use myself - fragmented but with
purposeful "abductive" reasoning. But to pull it off you have to
deliver a cadence.
A bit of bad writing in no way diminishes my opinion of someone I
respect as a scientist and teacher, but humanises him more. I see him
as an very authentic person and it brings me a smile to think of
Richard Feynman penning this and, as we all do, reading it back a few
weeks later and saying "WTF was I thinking?". Smart people are capable
of missing the mark.
It was not written as an article, it's a transcript of a speech (Caltech’s 1974 commencement address, if you read the introduction), that's why it all over the place.
Which is good, because I was not awed by the author's name. I think very highly of Feynman and might have been swayed to doubt my judgement rather than my experience. Guess this is why blind peer review is an awesome thing.
Of course I'm possibly too dumb to appreciate majestic poetry. Or it worked in 1974 in a way that fails now. Or we read different articles.
It's actually a writing style I use myself - fragmented but with purposeful "abductive" reasoning. But to pull it off you have to deliver a cadence.
A bit of bad writing in no way diminishes my opinion of someone I respect as a scientist and teacher, but humanises him more. I see him as an very authentic person and it brings me a smile to think of Richard Feynman penning this and, as we all do, reading it back a few weeks later and saying "WTF was I thinking?". Smart people are capable of missing the mark.