Feynman Technique

Applying the technique beyond science

Explaining an idea simply can reveal gaps in subjects such as the humanities, art, ethics, and religion. While science seeks to understand what is, art is more about what could be, and what is beautiful, unique, and interesting. Ethics is about what should be. And religion… well, that’s a realm all its own. But even though Feynman was a physicist and that was his passion, it doesn’t mean that his method is only applicable to science.

In fact, Feynman himself was drawn to the arts and brought the same spirit of wonder and impassioned inquiry to this field as he did to physics. Curiosity can lead across the boundaries of a specialty. Einstein played the violin and Heisenberg the piano. Feynman was attracted to drawing and art throughout his life, saying:

“I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world. It’s difficult to describe because it’s an emotion . . . It’s a feeling of awe—of scientific awe—which I felt could be communicated through a drawing to someone who had also had that emotion. I could remind him, for a moment, of this feeling about the glories of the universe.”

Drawing and particle physics require different skills. Feynman’s account connects them through curiosity about the world and the desire to communicate an experience of it.

Einstein would sometimes speak of a “cosmic religious feeling” that permeated and sustained his scientific work, and near the end of his life, he said he wished to “experience the universe as a single cosmic whole.” John Brooke at Oxford University says, “Like other great scientists he does not fit the boxes in which popular polemicists like to pigeonhole him. It is clear for example that he had respect for the religious values enshrined within Judaic and Christian traditions . . . but what he understood by religion was something far more subtle than what is usually meant by the word in popular discussion.” Brooke said that, despite rejecting conventional religion, Einstein resented his views being appropriated by militant atheists and was offended by their lack of humility, saying, “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.”

Feynman once wrote of religion:

“It is a great adventure to contemplate the universe beyond man, to think of what it means without man—as it was for the great part of its long history, and as it is in the great majority of places. When this objective view is finally attained, and the mystery and majesty of matter are appreciated, to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to see life as part of the universal mystery of greatest depth, is to sense an experience which is rarely described. It usually ends in laughter, delight in the futility of trying to understand. These scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged simply as a stage for God to watch man’s struggle for good and evil seems to be inadequate.”

Here, Feynman seems to be pointing out the inadequacies of conventional religious faith—but not because it is vast and mysterious and full of uncertainty, but because it is not vast and mysterious and uncertain enough!

Whether your science is “soft” or “hard,” or your subject is ethics, history, or art, try explaining an idea in ordinary language. Notice where you rely on a term you cannot explain or skip a step in the argument.

Return to the material to investigate those gaps, then revise the explanation. A listener’s questions can help identify assumptions you missed. Clear wording is useful, but it should preserve the distinctions and evidence that the subject requires.