Under The Microscope

THE CHARACTER OF PHYSICAL LAW, by Richard P. Feynman; Penguin, 1993; 173 pp; $19.95

Reviewed by Russell Dear

To readers of the NZSM, Richard Feynman will need no introduction. This is the third published collection of his lecture notes following the immense success of his biographical essays Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman and What Do You Care What Other People Think? subsequent to his death.

Feynman's credentials are impeccable -- a dazzling academic career culminating in a Nobel Prize for his work in quantum electrodynamics. Yet it is not just because he is one of the leading physicists of the century that his books are so widely read but because his individual and vibrant personality shines through in everything he writes.

In this book Feynman sets out to show us the general characteristics of Physical Laws. Although theoretical physics is subtle and highly abstract, offering a challenge to those intent upon explaining its complexities to others, Feynman's unusually informal explanations cut through the tangle of notation and specialised language so that the reader is able to share the beauty of deep concepts at the core.

Feynman believes that we live in an ordered universe and that nature's laws are subtly hidden in the phenomena scientists study. Philosophical speculation about nature, Feynman suggests, fails due to this subtlety. Instead one has to look at all possibilities and test them via the scientific method. Because it bothers him that such large amounts of logic and calculation are necessary to understand even this tiny region of space, Feynman hypothesises that ultimately physics will not need mathematics, that nature's laws will turn out to be quite simple.

The book contains a series of seven lecture notes. Using the example of gravitational law, Feynman shows how current studies in physics and mathematics are related, then moves on to the underlying principles of conservation and symmetry and examines the, perhaps not unexpected, fact that time never goes backwards. In the section on quantum mechanics he gets bogged down in his attempts to make the explanation comprehensible to all, but the final chapter on the search for new laws lifts the book as it describes the processes of science from a Feynman viewpoint.

To my mind the book doesn't enthrall as much as his biographies. It couldn't, the scope is much narrower. But the essential Feynman shines through and for those wanting more of his writings or those looking for a comprehensible introduction to the subject, the book is a must.

Russell Dear is a Mathematician living in Invercargill