Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (39 page)

At the first session of the meeting they talked about some technical matters, and I made a few comments. But later on, near the end of the meeting, they began to discuss some problem of logistics, about which I knew nothing. It had to do with figuring out how much stuff you should have at different places at different times. And although I tried to keep my trap shut, when you get into a situation like that, where you’re sitting around a table with all these “important people” discussing these “important problems,” you _can’t_ keep your mouth shut, even if you know nothing whatsoever! So I made some comments in that discussion, too.

During the next coffee break the guy who had been assigned to shepherd me around said, “I was very impressed by the things you said during the discussion. They certainly were an important contribution.”

I stopped and thought about my “contribution” to the logistics problem, and realized that a man like the guy who orders the stuff for Christmas at Macy’s would be better able to figure out how to handle problems like that than I. So I concluded: a) if I had made an important contribution, it was sheer luck; b) anybody else could have done as well, but _most_ people could have done _better_, and c) this flattery should wake me up to the fact that I am _not_ capable of contributing much.

Right after that they decided, in the meeting, that they could do better discussing the _organization_ of scientific research (such as, should scientific development be under the Corps of Engineers or the Quartermaster Division?) than specific technical matters. I knew that if there was to be _any_ hope of my making a real contribution, it would be only on some specific technical matter, and surely not on how to organize research in the army.

Until then I didn’t let on any of my feelings about the situation to the chairman of the meeting–the big shot who had invited me in the first place. As we were packing our bags to leave, he said to me, all smiles, “You’ll be joining us, then, for the next meeting..

“No, I won’t.” I could see his face change suddenly. He was _very_ surprised that I would say no, after making those “contributions.”

In the early sixties, a lot of my friends were still giving advice to the government. Meanwhile, I was having no feeling of social responsibility and resisting, as much as possible, offers to go to Washington, which took a certain amount of courage in those times.

I was giving a series of freshman physics lectures at that time, and after one of them, Tom Harvey, who assisted me in putting on the demonstrations, said, “You oughta see what’s happening to mathematics in schoolbooks! My daughter comes home with a lot of crazy stuff!”

I didn’t pay much attention to what he said.

But the next day I got a telephone call from a pretty famous lawyer here in Pasadena, Mr. Norris, who was at that time on the State Board of Education. He asked me if I would serve on the State Curriculum Commission, which had to choose the new schoolbooks for the state of California. You see, the state had a law that all of the schoolbooks used by all of the kids in all of the public schools have to be chosen by the State Board of Education, so they have a committee to look over the books and to give them advice on which books to take.

It happened that a lot of the books were on a new method of teaching arithmetic that they called “new math,” and since usually the only people to look at the books were schoolteachers or administrators in education, they thought it would be a good idea to have somebody who _uses_ mathematics scientifically, who knows what the end product is and what we’re trying to teach it for, to help in the evaluation of the schoolbooks.

I must have had, by this time, a guilty feeling about not cooperating with the government, because I agreed to get on this committee.

_Immediately_ I began getting letters and telephone calls from book publishers. They said things like, “We’re very glad to hear you’re on the committee because we really wanted a scientific guy . . . and “It’s wonderful to have a scientist on the committee, because our books are scientifically oriented . . .”

But they also said things like, “We’d like to explain to you what our book is about . . .” and “We’ll be very glad to help you in any way we can to judge our books . . .”

That seemed to me kind of crazy. I’m an objective scientist, and it seemed to me that since the only thing the kids in school are going to get is the books (and the teachers get the teacher’s manual, which I would also get), any _extra_ explanation from the company was a distortion. So I didn’t want to speak to any of the publishers and always replied, “You don’t have to explain; I’m sure the books will speak for themselves.”

I represented a certain district, which comprised most of the Los Angeles area except for the city of Los Angeles, which was represented by a very nice lady from the L.A. school system named Mrs. Whitehouse. Mr. Norris suggested that I meet her and find out what the committee did and how it worked.

Mrs. Whitehouse started out telling me about the stuff they were going to talk about in the next meeting (they had already had one meeting; I was appointed late). “They’re going to talk about the counting numbers.” I didn’t know what that was, but it turned out they were what I used to call integers. They had different names for everything, so I had a lot of trouble right from the start.

She told me how the members of the commission normally rated the new schoolbooks. They would get a relatively large number of copies of each book and would give them to various teachers and administrators in their district. Then they would get reports back on what these people thought about the books. Since I didn’t know a lot of teachers or administrators, and since I felt that I could, by reading the books myself, make up my mind as to how they looked to _me_, I chose to read all the books myself. (There were some people in my district who had expected to look at the books and wanted a chance to give their opinion. Mrs. Whitehouse offered to put their reports in with hers so they would feel better and I wouldn’t have to worry about their complaints. They were satisfied, and I didn’t get much trouble.)

A few days later a guy from the book depository called me up and said, “We’re ready to send you the books, Mr. Feynman; there are three hundred pounds.”

I was overwhelmed.

“It’s all right, Mr. Feynman; we’ll get someone to help you read them.”

I couldn’t figure out how you _do_ that: you either read them or you don’t read them. I had a special bookshelf put in my study downstairs (the books took up seventeen feet), and began reading all the books that were going to be discussed in the next meeting. We were going to start out with the elementary schoolbooks.

It was a pretty big job, and I worked all the time at it down in the basement. My wife says that during this period it was like living over a volcano. It would be quiet for a while, but then all of a sudden, “BLLLLLOOOOOOWWWWW!!!!”–there would be a big explosion from the “volcano” below. The reason was that the books were so lousy. They were false. They were hurried. They would _try_ to be rigorous, but they would use examples (like automobiles in the street for “sets”) which were _almost_ OK, but in which there were always some subtleties. The definitions weren’t accurate. Everything was a little bit ambiguous–they weren’t _smart_ enough to understand what was meant by “rigor.” They were faking it. They were teaching something they didn’t understand, and which was, in fact, _useless_, at that time, for the child.

I understood what they were trying to do. Many people thought we were behind the Russians after Sputnik, and some mathematicians were asked to give advice on how to teach math by using some of the rather interesting modern concepts of mathematics. The purpose was to enhance mathematics for the children who found it dull.

I’ll give you an example: They would talk about different bases of numbers–five, six, and so on–to show the possibilities. That would be interesting for a kid who could understand base ten–something to entertain his mind. But what they had turned it into, in these books, was that _every_ child had to learn another base! And then the usual horror would come: “Translate these numbers, which are written in base seven, to base five.” Translating from one base to another is an _utterly useless_ thing. If you _can_ do it, maybe it’s entertaining; if you _can’t_ do it, forget it. There’s no _point_ to it.

Anyhow, I’m looking at all these books, all these books, and none of them has said anything about using arithmetic in science. If there are any examples on the use of arithmetic at all (most of the time it’s this abstract new modern nonsense), they are about things like buying stamps.

Finally I come to a book that says, “Mathematics is used in science in many ways. We will give you an example from astronomy, which is the science of stars.” I turn the page, and it says, “Red stars have a temperature of four thousand degrees, yellow stars have a temperature of five thousand degrees . . .” –so far, so good. It continues: “Green stars have a temperature of seven thousand degrees, blue stars have a temperature of ten thousand degrees, and violet stars have a temperature of . . . (some big number).” There are no green or violet stars, but the figures for the others are roughly correct. It’s _vaguely_ right–but already, trouble! That’s the way everything was: Everything was written by somebody who didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, so it was a little bit wrong, always! And how we are going to teach well by using books written by people who don’t _quite_ understand what they’re talking about, I _cannot_ understand. I don’t know why, but the books are lousy; UNIVERSALLY LOUSY!

Anyway, I’m _happy_ with this book, because it’s the first example of applying arithmetic to science. I’m a _bit_ unhappy when I read about the stars’ temperatures, but I’m not _very_ unhappy because it’s more or less right–it’s just an example of error. Then cdtnes the list of problems. It says, “John and his father go out to look at the stars. John sees two blue stars and a red star. His father sees a green star, a violet star, and two yellow stars. What is the total temperature of the stars seen by John and his father?”–and I would explode in horror.

My wife would talk about the volcano downstairs. That’s only an example: it was _perpetually_ like that. Perpetual absurdity! There’s no purpose whatsoever in adding the temperature of two stars. Nobody ever does that except, maybe, to then take the _average_ temperature of the stars, but _not_ to find out the _total_ temperature of all the stars! It was awful! All it was was a game to get you to add, and they didn’t understand what they were talking about. It was like reading sentences with a few typographical errors, and then suddenly a whole sentence is written backwards. The mathematics was like that. Just hopeless!

Then I came to my first meeting. The other members had given some kind of ratings to some of the books, and they asked me what _my_ ratings were. My rating was often different from theirs, and they would ask, “Why did you rate that book low?”

I would say the trouble with that book was this and this on page so-and-so–I had my notes.

They discovered that I was kind of a goldmine: I would tell them, in detail, what was good and bad in all the books; I had a reason for every rating.

I would ask them why they had rated this book so high, and they would say, “Let us hear what you thought about such and such a book.” I would never find out why they rated anything the way they did. Instead, they kept asking me what _I_ thought.

We came to a certain book, part of a set of three supplementary books published by the same company, and they asked me what I thought about it.

I said, “The book depository didn’t send me that book, but the other two were nice.”

Someone tried repeating the question: “What do you think about that book?”

“I said they didn’t send me that one, so I don’t have any judgment on it.”

The man from the book depository was there, and he said, “Excuse me; I can explain that. I didn’t send it to you because that book hadn’t been completed yet. There’s a rule that you have to have every entry in by a certain time, and the publisher was a few days late with it. So it was sent to us with just the covers, and it’s blank in between. The company sent a note excusing themselves and hoping they could have their set of three books considered, even though the third one would be late.”

It turned out that the blank book had a rating by some of the other members! They couldn’t believe it was blank, because they had a rating. In fact, the rating for the missing book was a little bit higher than for the two others. The fact that there was nothing in the book had nothing to do with the rating.

I believe the reason for all this is that the system works this way: When you give books all over the place to people, they’re busy; they’re careless; they think, “Well, a lot of people are reading this book, SO it doesn’t make any difference.” And they put in some kind of number–some of them, at least; not all of them, but _some_ of them. Then when you receive your reports, you don’t know _why_ this particular book has fewer reports than the other books–that is, perhaps one book has ten, and this one only has six people reporting–so you average the rating of those who reported; you don’t average the ones who didn’t report, so you get a reasonable number. This process of averaging all the time misses the fact that there is absolutely nothing between the covers of the book!

I made that theory up because I saw what happened in the curriculum commission: For the blank book, only six out of the ten members were reporting, whereas with the other books, eight or nine out of the ten were reporting. And when they averaged the six, they got as good an average as when they averaged with eight or nine. They were very embarrassed to discover they were giving ratings to that book, and it gave me a little bit more confidence. It turned out the other members of the committee had done a lot of work in giving out the books and collecting reports, and had gone to sessions in which the book publishers would _explain_ the books before they read them; I was the only guy on that commission who read all the books and didn’t get any information from the book publishers except what was in the books themselves, the things that would ultimately go to the schools.