One kid said to me, “See that bird? What kind of bird is that?” I said, “I haven’t the slightest idea what kind of a bird it is.” He says, “It’s a brown-throated thrush (or something). Your father doesn’t teach you anything!” But it was the opposite. My father had taught me, looking at a bird, he says, “Do you know what that bird is? It’s a brown-throated thrush. But in Portuguese, it’s a Bom da Peida; in Italian, a Chutto Lapittida.” He says, “In Chinese, it’s a Chung-long-tah, and in Japanese, it’s a Katano Tekeda, et cetera.” He says, “Now you know all the languages you want to know what the name of that bird is, and when when you’re finished with all that,” he says, “you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You’ll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird. Well,” he says, “let’s look at the bird and what it’s doing.”
--Richard Feynman, source. Full video (The above passage happens at about the 7:00 mark in the full version.)
N.B. The transcript provided differs slightly from the video. I have followed the video.
Feynman knew physics but he didn’t know ornithology. When you name a bird, you’ve actually identified a whole lot of important things about it. It doesn’t matter whether we call a Passer domesticus a House Sparrow or an English Sparrow, but it is really useful to be able to know that the male and females are the same species, even though they look and sound quite different; and that these are not all the same thing as a Song Sparrow or a Savannah Sparrow. It is useful to know that Fox Sparrows are all Fox Sparrows, even though they may look extremely different depending on where you find them.
Assigning consistent names to the right groups of things is colossally important to biology and physics. Not being able to name birds for an ornithologist would be like a physicist not being able to say whether an electron and a positron are the same thing or not. Again it doesn’t matter which kind of particle we call electron and which we call positron (arguably Ben Franklin screwed up the names there by guessing wrong about the direction of current flow) but it matters a lot that we always call electrons electrons and positrons positrons. Similarly it’s important for a chemist to know that Helium 3 and Helium 4 are both Helium and not two different things (at least as far as chemistry and not nuclear physics is concerned).
Names are useful placeholders for important classifications and distinctions.
Feynman knew physics but he didn’t know ornithology. When you name a bird, you’ve actually identified a whole lot of important things about it.
I think Feynman’s point was that a name is meaningful if you already know the other information. I can memorize a list of names of North American birds, but at the end I’ll have learned next to nothing about them. I can also spend my days observing birds and learn a lot without knowing any of their names.
Assigning consistent names to the right groups of things is colossally important to biology and physics.
I don’t think anyone will disagree with this. The hard part, though, is properly setting up the groups in the first place. Good classification systems took years (or centuries) of work and refinement to become the systems we take for granted today.
Not being able to name birds for an ornithologist would be like a physicist not being able to say whether an electron and a positron are the same thing or not.
Feynman has been quoted elsewhere criticizing students for parroting physics terminology without having the least idea of what they’re actually talking about. There’s the anecdote about students who knew all about the laws of refraction but failed to identify water as a medium with a refractive index.
Feynman wasn’t really wrong, he just failed to mention that if you want to remember anything about a certain bird that you observed you will have to invent a name for it, because ‘the traveler hath no memory’. Original names are OK if you only want the knowledge for yourself.
I’m reminded of another Feynman anecdote: when he invented his own mathematical notion in middle school. It made more sense to him, but he soon realized that it was no good for communicating ideas to others.
Not being able to name birds for an ornithologist would be like a physicist not being able to say whether an electron and a positron are the same thing or not.
Did you deliberately pick this example, where Feynman speculated that they might be the same thing?
Names are useful as shorthand for a bundle of properties—but only once you know the actual bundle of properties. I sometimes think science should be taught with the examples first, and only given the name once students have identified the concept.
Semantics are important. On the other hand you don’t get additional knowledge from getting the name in an additional language that treats the concept with the same semantic borders.
Knowing the name of the bird tells you next to nothing about it, but once you know the name of the bird it becomes much easier for people to tell you about them.
--Richard Feynman, source. Full video (The above passage happens at about the 7:00 mark in the full version.)
N.B. The transcript provided differs slightly from the video. I have followed the video.
Related to: Replace the Symbol with the Substance
Feynman knew physics but he didn’t know ornithology. When you name a bird, you’ve actually identified a whole lot of important things about it. It doesn’t matter whether we call a Passer domesticus a House Sparrow or an English Sparrow, but it is really useful to be able to know that the male and females are the same species, even though they look and sound quite different; and that these are not all the same thing as a Song Sparrow or a Savannah Sparrow. It is useful to know that Fox Sparrows are all Fox Sparrows, even though they may look extremely different depending on where you find them.
Assigning consistent names to the right groups of things is colossally important to biology and physics. Not being able to name birds for an ornithologist would be like a physicist not being able to say whether an electron and a positron are the same thing or not. Again it doesn’t matter which kind of particle we call electron and which we call positron (arguably Ben Franklin screwed up the names there by guessing wrong about the direction of current flow) but it matters a lot that we always call electrons electrons and positrons positrons. Similarly it’s important for a chemist to know that Helium 3 and Helium 4 are both Helium and not two different things (at least as far as chemistry and not nuclear physics is concerned).
Names are useful placeholders for important classifications and distinctions.
I think Feynman’s point was that a name is meaningful if you already know the other information. I can memorize a list of names of North American birds, but at the end I’ll have learned next to nothing about them. I can also spend my days observing birds and learn a lot without knowing any of their names.
I don’t think anyone will disagree with this. The hard part, though, is properly setting up the groups in the first place. Good classification systems took years (or centuries) of work and refinement to become the systems we take for granted today.
Feynman has been quoted elsewhere criticizing students for parroting physics terminology without having the least idea of what they’re actually talking about. There’s the anecdote about students who knew all about the laws of refraction but failed to identify water as a medium with a refractive index.
Feynman wasn’t really wrong, he just failed to mention that if you want to remember anything about a certain bird that you observed you will have to invent a name for it, because ‘the traveler hath no memory’. Original names are OK if you only want the knowledge for yourself.
I’m reminded of another Feynman anecdote: when he invented his own mathematical notion in middle school. It made more sense to him, but he soon realized that it was no good for communicating ideas to others.
Every time I try to learn to sight-sing I get sidetracked by trying to invent better notation for music.
After many repeats of this process I’ve decided that music notation is pretty good, given the constraints under which it used to operate.
Now I’m trying to just force myself to learn to sight-sing, already.
Did you deliberately pick this example, where Feynman speculated that they might be the same thing?
Names are useful as shorthand for a bundle of properties—but only once you know the actual bundle of properties. I sometimes think science should be taught with the examples first, and only given the name once students have identified the concept.
Semantics are important. On the other hand you don’t get additional knowledge from getting the name in an additional language that treats the concept with the same semantic borders.
Yes, this is true.
Knowing the name of the bird tells you next to nothing about it, but once you know the name of the bird it becomes much easier for people to tell you about them.
Also related: Guessing the Teacher’s Password