<i>It was so humble and visceral and honest.</i><p><i>here was a Nobel laureate telling me that</i> he didn’t really understand it either<p><i>Analogies that were meant to “help understand” reality had in fact supplanted it ... ts entire aim was to pretend that science is not mysterious.</i><p>I've noticed that people at the top of their field in computing tend to have that humility, too. It's a contrast to those who insist that their way is the only way, that what they see is all there is to see. Computing is also mysterious.
I'm not a scientist and I don't play one on TV, but I've read Feynman's two auto-biographical books, "Surely You're Joking Mr.Feynman" and "What do you care what other people think - further adventures of a curious character" and they are both very well worth reading. What I didn't know until now was the sheer volume of writing he did in his lifetime. A search on bookfinder.com comes up with literally dozens of books.
<i>"Professor, please give me an approximate description of the electromagnetic waves, even though it may be slightly innacurate, so that I too can see them as well as I can see almost-invisible angels. Then I will modify the picture to the necessary abstraction.”</i><p><i>"I’m sorry I can’t do that for you. I don’t know how. I have no picture of this electromagnetic field that is in any sense accurate. (…) So if you have some difficulty in making such a picture, you should not be worried that your difficulty is unusual."</i><p>Honesty.