The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman (excerptions)
By Richard P. Feynman
Edited by Jeffrey Robbins
Link
This is an example of the socionical analysis of the text by the system approach
The Beauty of a Flower
I have a friend who's an artist and he's sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree, I think (low dimensionality - he is not sure about the experiential sensing - S, so he can accept it without evaluation). And he says — "you see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is (experiential sensing - S), but you as a scientist (structural logic - L), oh, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing". (Potentiality intuition - I) And I think that he's kind of nutty. (Basicly he doesn't agree with this opition, but this opinion is the complicated one. There are experiential sensing - S, Potentiality intuition - I and structural logic - L information elements in it. Let's look further). First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me, too, I believe, although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is He is unsured about his ability to accept beauty, possiably because of low dimesionality the experiential sensing - S ; but I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time I see much more about the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension of one centimeter, there is also beauty at a smaller dimension, the inner structure. Also the processes, the fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting—it means that insects can see the color. response information element change (RIEC) fom the experiential sensing - S to the structural logic - L It adds a question: Does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? response information element change (RIEC) to the potentiality intuition - I All kinds of interesting questions which shows that a science knowledge only adds to the excitement and mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds; I don't understand how it subtracts. the structural logic - L seems to be valuable to the author
Avoiding Humanities
I've always been very one-sided about science and when I was younger I concentrated almost all my effort on itthe structural logic - L is a value function. Also a plus sign in the practical logic - P is possible. I didn't have time to learn and I didn't have much patience with what's called the humanities, even though in the university there were humanities that you had to take I tried my best to avoid somehow learning anything and working at it.(low-dimesionality, the information element is not determined clearly, possiable the experiential sensing - S (futher he named "drawing" as one of humanitites).It was only afterwards, when I got older, that I got more relaxed(possible negative Contolling Emotions (CE) has gone in course of time), that I've spread out a little bit. I've learned to draw and I read a little bit, but I'm really still a very one-sided person and I don't know a great deal. I have a limited intelligence and I use it in a particular direction. (it may be posible that the practical logic or the potentiality intuition is the plus signed function)
Tyrannosaurus in the Window
We had the Encyclopaedia Britannica at home and even when I was a small boy [my father] used to sit me on his lap and read to me from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and we would read, say, about dinosaurs and maybe it would be talking about the brontosaurus or something, or the tyrannosaurus rex, and it would say something like, "This thing is twenty-five feet high and the head is six feet across," you see, and so he'd stop all this and say, "Let's see what that means. That would mean that if he stood in our front yard he would be high enough to put his head through the window but not quite because the head is a little bit too wide and it would break the window as it came by."
Everything we'd read would be translated as best we could into some reality and so I learned to do that—everything that I read I try to figure out what it really means, what it's really saying by translating and so (LAUGHS) I used to read the Encyclopaedia when I was a boy but with translation, you see, so it was very exciting and interesting to think there were animals of such magnitude (In general we can say that this all about parameter of norms in the potentiality intuition - I. Also there is a intrest in the potentiality intuition - I) Also —I wasn't frightened that there would be one coming in my window as a consequence of this, I don't think, but I thought that it was very, very interesting, that they all died out and at that time nobody knew why. (intrested in in the potentiality intuition I - he's point is about "the reason" why they all died. Also we should say that there is no fear about unclear I - information (reason is not clear). It could mark a high dimensionality in the potentiality intuition - I)
We used to go to the Catskill Mountains. We lived in New York and the Catskill Mountains was the place where people went in the summer; and the fathers—there was a big group of people there but the fathers would all go back to New York to work during the week and only come back on the weekends. When my father came he would take me for walks in the woods and tell me various interesting things that were going on in the woods—which I'll explain in a minute—but the other mothers seeing this, of course, thought this was wonderful and that the other fathers should take their sons for walks, and they tried to work on them but they didn't get anywhere at first and they wanted my father to take all the kids, but he didn't want to because he had a special relationship with me—we had a personal thing together—so it ended up that the other fathers had to take their children for walks the next weekend, and the next Monday when they were all back to work, all the kids were playing in the field and one kid said to me, "See that bird, what kind of a bird is that?" And I said, "I haven't the slightest idea what kind of a bird it is." He says, "It's a brown throated thrush," or something, "Your father doesn't tell you anything." But it was the opposite: my father had taught me. Looking at a bird he says, "Do you know what that bird is? It's a brown throated thrush; but in Portuguese it's a ... in Italian a ...," he says "in Chinese it's a ..., in Japanese a ...," etcetera. "Now," he says, "you know in all the languages you want to know what the name of that bird is (structural logic - L) and when you've finished with all that," he says, "you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. (potentiality intuition - I) You only know about humans in different places and what they call the bird. Now," he says, "let's look at the bird." (Father learned him in the structural logic - L and potentiality intuition - I)
He had taught me to notice things and one day when I was playing with what we call an express wagon, which is a little wagon which has a railing around it for children to play with that they can pull around. It had a ball in it—I remember this—it had a ball in it, and I pulled the wagon and I noticed something about the way the ball moved, so I went to my father and I said, "Say, Pop, I noticed something: When I pull the wagon the ball rolls to the back of the wagon, and when I'm pulling it along and I suddenly stop, the ball rolls to the front of the wagon," and I says, "why is that?" (He noticed the information on the practical logic - P) And he said, "That nobody knows," he said."The general principle is that things that are moving try to keep on moving and things that are standing still tend to stand still unless you push on them hard." And he says, "This tendency is called inertia but nobody knows why it's true." (structural logic - L) Now that's a deep understanding—he doesn't give me a name, he knew the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something, which I learnt very early (the parameter of norms in the potentiality intuition - I). He went on to say, "If you look close you'll find the ball does not rush to the back of the wagon, but it's the back of the wagon that you're pulling against the ball; that the ball stands still or as a matter of fact from the friction starts to move forward really and doesn't move back."(practical logic - P) So I ran back to the little wagon and set the ball up again and pulled the wagon from under it and looking sideways and seeing indeed he was right—the ball never moved backwards in the wagon when I pulled the wagon forward. It moved backward relative to the wagon, but relative to the sidewalk it was moved forward a little bit, it's just [that] the wagon caught up with it. So that's the way I was educated by my father, with those kinds of examples and discussions, no pressure, just lovely interesting discussions (volitional sensing - F).
Doubt and Uncertainty
If you expected science to give all the answers to the wonderful questions about what we are, where we're going, what the meaning of the universe is and so on, then I think you could easily become disillusioned and then look for some mystic answer to these problems. How a scientist can take a mystic answer I don't know because the whole spirit is to understand—well, never mind that. Anyhow, I don't understand that, but anyhow if you think of it, the way I think of what we're doing is we're exploring, we're trying to find out as much as we can about the world. People say to me, "Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?" No, I'm not, I'm just looking to find out more about the world and if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it, that would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it's like an onion with millions of layers and we're just sick and tired of looking at the layers, then that's the way it is, but whatever way it comes out its nature is there and she's going to come out the way she is, and therefore when we go to investigate it we shouldn't predecide what it is we're trying to do except to try to find out more about it. If you say your problem is, why do you find out more about it, if you thought you were trying to find out more about it because you're going to get an answer to some deep philosophical question, you may be wrong. It may be that you can't get an answer to that particular question by finding out more about the character of nature, but I don't look at it [like that] An incomprehension and lack of answers don't сause a fear - it could mark a high dimensionality in the potentiality intuition - I and structural logic -L . My interest in science is to simply find out about the world, and the more I find out the better it is, like, to find out.
In this paragraph we can see a block of functions - the potentiality intuition and structural logic, mental type reactions in the potentiality intuition (I) and structural logic (L) - Richard Feynman reflects while answering, asks questions, speaks not only about himself and on his own behalf, but also about people in general, on behalf of many others, uses the pronoun «we», «you» instead of «I». There is a interest in the potentiality intuition - I. It may be possible that the potentiality intuition contains the aim of his realization, his perception of the world is interpreted through the potentiality intuition
There are very remarkable mysteries about the fact that we're able to do so many more things than apparently animals can do, and other questions like that, but those are mysteries I want to investigate without knowing the answer to them, and so altogether I can't believe these special stories that have been made up about our relationship to the universe at large because they seem to be too simple, too connected, too local, too provincialR.F. sees the narrowness of conventional answers - it could mark a high dimensionality in the potentiality intuition - I. The earth, He came to the earth, one of the aspects of God came to the earth, mind you, and look at what's out there. It isn't in proportion. Anyway, it's no use arguing, I can't argue it, I'm just trying to tell you why the scientific views that I have do have some effect on my belief. And also another thing has to do with the question of how you find out if something's true, and if all the different religions have all different theories about the thing, then you begin to wonder. Once you start doubting, just like you're supposed to doubt, you ask me if the science is true. You say no, we don't know what's true, we're trying to find out and everything is possibly wrong.
Start out understanding religion by saying everything is possibly wrong. Let us see. As soon as you do that, you start sliding down an edge which is hard to recover from and so on. With the scientific view, or my father's view, that we should look to see what's true and what may be or may not be true He reflects while answering, asks questions, speaks not only about himself and on his own behalf, but also about people in general, on behalf of many others, uses the pronoun «we», «you», «us» instead of «I». It may be possible that phrases such as «Let's look», «Let us see» are the indicators of the mental track function., once you start doubting, which I think to me is a very fundamental part of my soul Use the sentence «I think» could mark a mental-type reaction in the potentiality intuition (I), to doubt and to ask, and when you doubt and ask it gets a little harder to believe.
You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing a high dimensionality in the potentiality intuition- there is no fear about unclear I - information . I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong indicator of the plus-signed function - avoiding of the negative information in the potentiality intuition (I) - wrong, fallacy, etc.. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit and if I can't figure it out, then I go on to something else, but I don't have to know an answer, I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is so far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten me. control emotions of high-dimensional functions - the unknown, incomprehension and lack of answers don't сause a fear
Conclusion:
Information from these excerptions isn't enough for the TIM (type of informational metabolism) identification, but just enough for the version of TIM.
We've found the indicators of a low dimensionality in the experiential sensing - S, indicators of a high dimensionality and mental type reactions in the structural logic (L) and potentiality intuition (I), indicators of a plus sign function in the potentiality intuition (I) and practical logic (P). Response information element change (RIEC) from the experiential sensing (S) to the structural logic and potentiality intuition. Potentiality intuition (I) and structural logic (L) are value functions and comprise into the ego block. It may be possible that the potentiality intuition is the function 1, it contains the aim of realization, the perception of the world is interpreted through the potentiality intuition. The version of type of informational metabolism (TIM) is Intuitive logical extravert - IL (Don Quixote).