The joy of Physics

Lately, I have resurrected my high school interest in physics by reading Feynman’s lectures in Physics. It was back in my high school days that I used to marvel at my friends collection of those prized 3 volumes that I could not afford. Today, I own them. And I adore them. In those days, marveling physics was one thing, but Feynman himself was a personality extraordinaire. His model was something to admire and impossible to expereince. Almost akin to being a fan of a movie star. While traversing through several units of space and time, since then - I have come closer to the genius in my own right - meeting people who knew him by his first name. During challenger investigation, his thrust was to keep away from blaming the management and culture – the easiest segment to blame when you are too lame to come up with a scientific explanation. By the way management and culture was the root cause found for Columbia’s disaster that led to the faulty foam design. Feynman once pointed out (I am not 100% sure), the failure rate would be 1 in 50 for space flights – way below what NASA thinks now. Based on the track record, he was not wrong. Just that we are too scared to think that way.

I believe there is something innate in us that disallows us from accepting the intrinsic possibilities that may cause us pain. As an engineer, who frequently gets involved in mission critical systems, I find dealing with proabilities of failures and success on a daily basis. Yet as a human being how little we are tuned to accepting "chance" and "uncertainty" as real components of reality. As an anonymous quote goes, "Maturity is the ability of enduring uncertainty." It seems all our value systems, our push for inventing new things, believe in religion and God - all seem to geared towards creating certainty. Even Einstein nodded his head with the probabilistic treatment of quantum physics - saying "God does not play dice" to determine the motions. Consulting a psychic or praying for a better future all seem to be ways to peek into the future. I sometimes wonder, if I had kept noting or had a dime for everything that I expected and what really turned out - and I be brutally honest - the gap will be quite enormous and I would saved a fortune. May be God does play dice. May be there is no such thing as certainty. And no one really cares, beyond we mortals. It is all about estimating the chance of survival and happiness. How about doing minor rephrasing of statements like - "If you study, you will get a job, and you will be happy." to "If you study, there is higher CHANCE you will get a job, and there is higher CHANCE you will be happy." Well someone else may propose "If you are happy, CHANCES are you will get a job, and CHANCES are you will study." But whether the "being" drives the "action" or the "action" drives the "being" is a separate philosophical question. For now, it's the joy of physics - the innate notion that everything can be explained through its laws.