Feynman's Rainbow

What Hacker News says

1. ISLNov 2019
   Luck matters more than we are often led to believe. One can generate luck, to an extent, through persistence.

   Leonard Mlodinow has written two books that you might find both resonant and uplifting:

   Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life , and The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives.

   Furthermore -- if you went to grad school and learned something, either about the subject or yourself, then the effort was not a failure. In the long game, it isn't about the degree nor the piece of paper.

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2. shawnSep 2018
   Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and Life is a good read: https://www.amazon.com/Feynmans-Rainbow-Search-Beauty-Physic...

   Minor spoiler alert.

   Feynman had a strong dislike for string theory, even going so far as to shout at someone "I don't want to talk about string theory!" Presumably, Feynman could sense that this kind of "search for beauty" was against empiricism. I always found it interesting that even back then, when empirical observation seemed to rein supreme, there were those who eschewed it and searched for meaning beyond what nature presents to us.

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3. a_bonoboSep 2015
   This fits well with the "Babylonian vs. Greek" approaches to science that Feynman talked about (a few days ago linked here, too), the Greek approach being "linear, logical", while the Babylonian approach is more all-encompassing, but possibly more messy, too.

   If you like to read more about this, take a look at Mlodinow's "Feynman's Rainbow" - it's a small autobiographical book about his time as a starting physics post-doc after a highly promising PhD thesis. He had his office a few doors down from Feynman (Babylonian) and Gell-Mann (Greek) and the book juxtaposes both positions.

   Mlodinow took up screenplay writing as a hobby, similar to OP's text his old PhD supervisor got angry when Mlodinow told him about his new hobby, "what a waste of time and thinking power" (paraphrased quote). He actually did end up writing a few episodes for Star Trek: TNG and is still a accomplished scientist, with quite a few successful popular science books published (one with Hawking: "The Grand Design").

   Another thing:

   >Salvador Dali would dream in his chair as part of his work routine. The authors of the paper “Dual thinking for scientists” suggest controlled risk-taking, and artistic hobbies, and so called “mind-wandering” into future scientific education.

   You might have heard this (I think unproven) story a few times. Descartes always famously slept until lunch-time. One day he was idling in bed and watching a fly, which gave him the idea to describe the fly's movement in terms of three coordinates. Thus the Cartesian coordinate system was born.

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4. rfzabickOct 2014
   I just finished Feynman's Rainbow by Mlodinow. It's an interesting look at Feynman and Gell-Man. It was a little lighter on Feynman moments than I expected, but certainly worth the read. I took a break from the 3rd Game of Thrones book to read that.
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5. themodelplumberDec 2022
   I realized I can't really recommend books to audiences much anymore, because I don't read those types of audience-books as much as I used to.

   But still, here are some I probably bought for $0.99 and enjoyed:

   Lost Restaurants of Seattle

   This Outcast Generation by Taijun Takeda

   The Royal Navy Lynx: An Operational History

   A Doctor's War by Aidan MacCarthy

   Sniping in France by Hesketh-Prichard

   The Art of Whittling by Faurot

   Moscow Calling by Angus Roxburgh

   Feynman's Rainbow by Leonard Mlodinow

   Icelandic Folk Tales by Stefansson

   If you like any of those topics then you have my random recommendation, and possibly the indulgent vanity of once more having avoided consumer risk, or maybe consumer regret.

   These were fun in 2022, in addition to 1) web browsing, which I find is definitely reading, despite all its numbered-pagelessness, and 2) dipping back into lots of classics and favorites, from Blacksad to Darwin to Scaramouche and Tom Sawyer.

   (Possibly throwing in a volume on the adventures of Groo, a Weird Tales, a Comics Cavalcade, some TTRPGs, and a Scooby-Doo Team-Up...)

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6. cpp_frogJul 2021
   If I remember correctly, according to Leonard Mlodinow's Feynman's Rainbow, Gell-Mann wrote that in Feynman's obituary for the Physics Review. It "raised quite a few eyebrows".
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