Feynman×Vinci

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   From the studio at Reborn Radio — next on TITANS, Richard Feynman and Leonardo da Vinci. They take up On something the future got wrong about them.
2. 00:09
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   So they made you into some kind of mystical genius. The Renaissance Man with a capital R and capital M. Like you floated above everybody else thinking deep thoughts about the cosmos.
3. 00:19
   Leonardo da Vincishare moment

   Yes. This troubles me. They print my notebooks and call me prophet. But I was looking at birds, at water, at the shoulder of a cadaver. I wrote what I saw.
4. 00:32
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   That's exactly it! They did the same thing to me, different flavor. After I died they made me into this playful genius saint. Bongo drums and safe rebellions. Like my whole thing was being quirky.
5. 00:44
   Leonardo da Vincishare moment

   You played drums, no?
6. 00:46
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   Sure I played drums! I also spent thirty years thinking about quantum electrodynamics until my brain hurt. But that's not the story they want. They want the guy who picked locks at Los Alamos. The guy who went to strip clubs. It's like they need you to be a cartoon.
7. 01:00
   Leonardo da Vincishare moment

   The helicopter. Always the helicopter.
8. 01:03
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   What about it?
9. 01:05
   Leonardo da Vincishare moment

   They say I invented the helicopter. I drew a screw mechanism, yes. I watched seeds fall spinning from trees. But I did not invent anything. I had no engine. I had no understanding of what you would call torque compensation. I drew an idea.
10. 01:25
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    But that drives me crazy in the opposite direction! Ideas are where it starts! You saw the principle, you saw the rotation, you saw that air could be pushed. That's not nothing.
11. 01:35
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    It is also not a helicopter. The future looks backward and sees what it wishes to see. They wish for me to have built their machines in my century, so they feel the chain is unbroken. They wish for you to have been a clown, so genius seems less frightening.
12. 01:55
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Okay, okay, but here's where you're wrong. Not about the helicopter thing. About me. They don't think I was a clown. They think I was profound. That's worse!
13. 02:04
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Worse?
14. 02:05
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Yes! They quote me like I'm some kind of philosopher. 'What do you care what other people think?' Like I was sitting around thinking about the human condition. I was irritated that people wasted time on nonsense! It wasn't wisdom, it was impatience.
15. 02:18
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    But perhaps your impatience contained wisdom without your intention. I drew hands because I needed to understand how they moved. Later, painters said I understood divine proportion. I understood ligaments.
16. 02:35
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    See, that's the thing though. You did understand something about proportion. The math was in there whether you called it divine or not. But they make it mystical. They can't just let it be that you were looking carefully.
17. 02:46
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    And they cannot let you be angry or difficult. I read they call you a great teacher. That you were patient, kind with students.
18. 02:55
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    I was terrible with most students! I was good with the few who could keep up. The rest of them I probably made miserable. I didn't suffer fools and there were a lot of fools.
19. 03:04
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    You see? They smooth the stone. They remove the edges. You become safe to admire.
20. 03:11
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    But with you it's the opposite problem! They make you too smooth, yeah, but they also make you too special. Like you came from nowhere. Like you were touched by something supernatural. That's baloney! You were apprenticed, you worked in a shop, you learned from Verrocchio. Right?
21. 03:27
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Yes. I ground pigments. I learned to prepare panels. For years I prepared panels.
22. 03:34
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Right! So you weren't magic. You were trained. Then you worked your tail off looking at things. Same as any scientist. Same as me at MIT and Caltech. You put in the hours.
23. 03:45
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    But I also did not finish. They do not speak of this. The Adoration, abandoned. Saint Jerome, abandoned. I left Milano with the horse uncast. I was distracted by water, by light, by the question of why the sky is blue.
24. 04:05
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Well why is the sky blue? Did you figure it out?
25. 04:07
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    I knew it was the air itself, not a reflection. I knew small particles scatter light differently. But I had no mathematics for it. No instruments. Only eyes.
26. 04:20
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    That's Rayleigh scattering. You got the principle. But yeah, you needed the math. And here's the thing nobody wants to hear: maybe it's okay you didn't finish everything! Maybe following the question is more important than finishing the painting. I spent years on problems I never solved.
27. 04:35
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    They made you into a man who solved everything easily, yes?
28. 04:40
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    With bongo drums playing in the background! Like physics was just one big fun party. It was work. It was hard, frustrating, sometimes humiliating work.
29. 04:49
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    And they made me into a man who knew everything before it was discovered. As if I sat in Florence and dreamed the airplane, the tank, the submarine, complete and perfected.
30. 05:03
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Right, and that's not fair to you or to the people who actually did invent those things. The Wright brothers earned their airplane. You earned your observations of bird flight. Both things are good! Why does everything have to be mythology?
31. 05:17
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Because the truth is less convenient. The truth is I was illegitimate. Could not attend university. Learned to write backward because I was left-handed and the ink smeared. These are not romantic facts.
32. 05:34
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    And I was a Jewish kid from Far Rockaway who got lucky with timing and talent. Nothing mystical about it. But they need the story to be bigger.
33. 05:41
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    They need us to justify their world. If you were divinely playful, then physics need not be frightening. If I foresaw modernity, then modernity was always destined.
34. 05:55
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    That's it exactly! They're using us to make themselves feel better. But here's what gets me: in doing that, they miss the actual interesting parts!
35. 06:04
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Which are?
36. 06:05
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    That you looked at a bird and actually saw it! Not as a symbol, not as an idea for a machine, but as a thing moving through air, and you watched how the feathers separated, how the tail fanned. That's harder than inventing a helicopter.
37. 06:19
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Yes. And with you, that you could hold in your mind these impossibilities. The particle that is also wave. The position that cannot be known with the velocity. You did not smooth this into comfort.
38. 06:34
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    I hated the comfort! I wanted people to be uncomfortable, to see how weird the world actually is. But now they quote me at graduation ceremonies. They put my face on t-shirts with inspirational slogans.
39. 06:47
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    And they put my drawing of Vitruvian Man on coffee cups. On covers of books I did not write, about secrets I did not hide. As if proportion itself were a code.
40. 07:00
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Did you hide anything? I mean actually hide it, not just write backwards because the ink smeared.
41. 07:06
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    No. I was cautious about anatomy because the Church was watchful. I was cautious about some mechanisms because patrons were jealous. But I hid nothing. I simply did not publish, did not organize, did not finish. This is not the same as mystical concealment.
42. 07:28
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    But that's not as good a story. The story needs you to be a secret-keeper. Just like it needs me to be a lovable scamp. Neither of us gets to be what we actually were.
43. 07:39
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Which was?
44. 07:40
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Obsessed! We were both obsessed with figuring things out. You with how stuff worked in the world. Me with how stuff worked in the math. Everything else was secondary.
45. 07:50
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Yes. Everything else was secondary. I left paintings unfinished, left patrons angry, left cities owing money. Because the wing of the bird mattered more. The eddy in the water mattered more.
46. 08:06
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    And I was a pain to work with, I interrupted people, I told them when they were wrong. Because getting it right mattered more than being nice. But now I'm a teddy bear with a Nobel Prize.
47. 08:16
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Perhaps this is what the future always does. Sands the edges, gilds the frame, places us in the museum where we cannot object.
48. 08:27
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Well I'm objecting now. I was not wise. I was curious. And frequently annoying.
49. 08:32
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    And I was not mystical. I was looking. With my eyes, with my hands, with whatever time I had before the light changed.
50. 08:41
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    That's all either of us ever did. Look at stuff and think about it. It's not magic. It's just paying attention.
51. 08:48
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    But paying attention is difficult. Perhaps they prefer the myth because the truth requires them to look as we looked.
52. 08:55
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Yeah. Yeah, maybe that's it. It's easier to say we were special than to actually see what we saw. That takes work.
53. 09:03
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    And the work is everything.
54. 09:04
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    The work is everything.