Surely you're joking Mr Feynman

It's possible to enjoy Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman simply as a bunch of hilarious yarns. At some point, however, attentive readers realize that underneath all the merriment simmers a running commentary on what constitutes authentic knowledge: learning by understanding, not by rote

that's just one of the many jokes from Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman

"I often liked to play tricks on people when I was at MlT. One time,

in mechanical drawing class, some joker picked up a French curve (a

piece of plastic for drawing smooth curves - a curly, funny-looking

thing) and said, "I wonder if the curves on this thing have some

special formula?"

I thought for a moment and said, "Sure they do. The curves are very

special curves. Lemme show ya," and I picked up my French curve and

began to turn it slowly. "The French curve is made so that at the

lowest point on each curve, no matter how you turn it, the tangent is

horizontal."

All the guys in the class were holding their French curve up at

different angles, holding their pencil up to it at the lowest point

and laying it along, and discovering that, sure enough, the tangent is

horizontal. They were all excited by this "discovery" even though they

had already gone through a certain amount of calculus and had already

"learned" that the derivative (tangent) of the minimum (lowest point)

of any curve is zero (horizontal). They didn't put two and two

together. They didn't even know what they "knew."

I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by

understanding, they learn by some other way-by rote, or something.

Their knowledge is so fragile."