Richard Feynman - The Difference Between: Knowing the Name of Something and Knowing Something

Sharon D. Anderson
Stroke Survivors Tattler

January 5, 2015 by Shane Parrish

SSTattler: Thanks Sharon for links aphasia <---> physics...!! A part of the whole article is in fs Farnam Street.

Richard Feynman, who believed that “the world is much more interesting than any one discipline,” was no ordinary genius.

His explanations — on why questions, why trains stay on the tracks as they go around a curve, how we look for new laws of science, how rubber bands work, — are simple and powerful. Even his letter writing moves you. His love letter to his wife sixteen months after her death still stirs my soul.

In this short clip (below), Feynman articulates the difference between knowing the name of something and understanding it.

See that bird? It’s a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it’s called a halzenfugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird. You only know something about people; what they call the bird. Now that thrush sings, and teaches its young to fly, and flies so many miles away during the summer across the country, and nobody knows how it finds its way.

Knowing the name of something doesn’t mean you understand it. We talk in fact-deficient, obfuscating generalities to cover up our lack of understanding.


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See the full article:

Richard Feynman: The Difference Between Knowing the Name of Something and Knowing Something

in

fs Farnam Street