I was particularly struck by the section in the Feynman book entitled “A Map of a Cat?” in which he discusses his transition to and his time at Princeton.  This chapter seemed particularly relevant to us in a gen ed seminar and possibly to our students at City Tech.  First of all, I found his depiction of his visit to the philosophy seminar really funny.  It is, I think, objectively funny, though I’m sure it made me laugh because of my own involvement in the discourse of philosophy and in the study of philosophy.  But the gist of what is being discussed in that short passage recurs in the chapter as a whole.  For instance, when he first arrives at Princeton and is asked if he would like tea with lemon or cream, and he replies, “both,” as well as at the library when he asks the reference librarian for “a map of a cat,” and the reference librarian really has no idea what he is talking about.  The chapter as a whole seems to be about disciplinary boundaries and terminology/cultural terminology, and how important these things are to being seen as an insider or outsider.

I really liked that Feynman was so willing and eager to actually participate in seminars outside of his discipline and to ask questions that in some cases were not relevant, but in some cases very relevant, and, for the most part, be taken seriously.  To me, this chapter is really about how important it is to invite questioning from disciplines other than your own and to take it seriously, even though the terminology/linguistic etiquette is not perfect.  My own research has to do with what allows people to have the authority to ask questions and I find often at City Tech, as many other faculty members do, that our students have very good questions to ask but often do not feel authorized to ask them because of their perceived or actual distance/sense of exclusion from institutions/processes of cultural authorization.

On a separate note, though still on the subject of interdisciplinary coincidences, I was reading an article by David Olson over the break on the subject of literacy history and sociology, and he actually quotes Feynman in his article.  The quote is not from _Surely, You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman_, but elsewhere.  Nevertheless, I found the quote very interesting.  Olson writes, “Revision is ‘work on paper’ in the sense that it is interacting with the written form somewhat independently of the intentions of the writer. Clark (2008) cites an exchange between Nobel- prize winning physicist Richard Feynman and the historian of science Charles Weiner. Weiner had come upon some of Feynman’s original notes that he characterized as Feynman’s ‘record of day-to-day work’. Feynman contested the description saying ‘I actually did the work on the paper … It’s not a record, not really. It’s working. You have to work on paper and this is the paper. Okay?’ (Gleick, 1993, p. 409).”