The Meaning of it All

Meh....

Mostly highlights of "Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman." From the onset, he admits to getting out of his depth with non-scientific statements, and accordingly, I found many of his philosophies to be straightforwardder, but shallow, opinions. Clearly a very nice man, engaged with his world and his time. Lovingly self-deprecating understanding the limits of his knowledge. My only criticism is that I thought at first this was a book he had written and thus had given time to think things through. However this is really a post-mortem compilation of lectures, speeches, and anecdotes, some of which comes off as random thoughts blurted out that were simply inaccurate.

Lastly, the title conveys to the reader an expectation of learning some insight on Dr Feynman's personal philosophy of life. Instead we get the idea from the text, quite wrongly I assume, that he never gave "the meaning of it all" much thought. In place of searching for meaning, mechanisms, or truth, this book leads one to believe Dr Feynman never sought such questions. This I doubt. The meaning of it all?......."just because"......

6 people found this helpful

Insightful

Feynman does not dissapoint in this series of three lectures. In other Feynman titles, Feynman will veil some of his views, in these lectures he lets it all out. Great book.

8 people found this helpful

Was hoping for better

I was hoping for a lot better. While there were insights and interesting thoughts in the book, they were connected loosely without leading to anywhere of significance. A great part of the disappointment came from the narrator - the life of Feynman's original lectures was simply not there.

2 people found this helpful

richard feynman should be read

Would you listen to The Meaning of it All again? Why?

Many,many times

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

This man is a genius and even when I don't agree with him at times he always gives clear explanations for his reasoning everything like communism being unscientific and next to useless is honestly gone over ,plus the fact that science is not there to disprove God, that's not sciences job I love his explanations ,should be recommended for one side of science Stevenson the other forme for pro and con of paranormal and obviously feynman disagrees with that ,but on the politics of paranoia I defiantly recommend this book

What does Raymond Todd bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Raymond Todd dosent sound like feynman but at times he captures the flavour very closely all in all an excellent job he should be proud

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No,some books make you think, you have to.but it's easy to read ,I just think it's the kind of book to put down ,and look at the world and politics around you, and see it actually happening,rather frightining