Not Why We Do It

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Richard Feyn­n­man

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some prac­ti­cal results, but that’s not why we do it.

― Richard P. Feynman

Feyn­man could have been say­ing that about any of the sciences.

I have a per­sonal obses­sion to study sci­ence in gen­eral, and space sci­ence in par­tic­u­lar. This mad­ness has been with me for as long as I can remem­ber. I already felt it on Sep­tem­ber 12th, 1962, when, at the age of six, I saw Pres­i­dent Kennedy on tele­vi­sion, speak­ing as if directly to me. That was the day he com­mit­ted Amer­ica to lit­er­ally reach for the Moon. I’ve never been the same. Nei­ther has the rest of the world.

Log­a­rchism is a polit­i­cal blog. What has my obses­sion with space to do with pol­i­tics? I’ve writ­ten about this before. Pol­i­tics, like sci­ence, some­times gives prac­ti­cal results, but that’s not why we do it. Sure, prac­ti­cal­ity is the rea­son we give our­selves. Hon­estly though, how much of the rhetoric asso­ci­ated with pol­i­tics, how much of the game play­ing and the issues that drive peo­ple to the polls, has actual prac­ti­cal value? Some, yes, but birth cer­tifi­cates? See­ing Rus­sia? Really?

Many of these things serve other pur­poses. The real value of space sci­ence is not prac­ti­cal, unless learn­ing about your­self, about real­ity, about how the uni­verse actu­ally works, is practical.

A Curi­ousity

On August 6, less than three weeks from now, NASA’s lat­est mis­sion to Mars is sched­uled to attempt a land­ing there. The Curios­ity rover — for­mally known as the Mars Sci­ence Lab­o­ra­tory — will go through a com­plex series of maneu­vers that will bring its veloc­ity from more than 13,000 miles per hour down to zero MPH, for a soft land­ing on another planet. And this will hap­pen in about seven min­utes. The whole thing needs to be entirely autonomous. That is, the craft has to land on Mars on its own, with no assis­tance from Earth. Mars is so far away at the moment it takes radio waves four­teen min­utes to travel from there to here. If some­thing goes wrong, we won’t even hear about it until four­teen min­utes after it’s hap­pened. By then, Curios­ity will either have safely landed, or have fatally crashed, at least seven min­utes earlier.

The rover is eas­ily the largest and most com­plex to be sent to Mars. It’s about the size of a Mini Cooper — with a weather sta­tion, a robot arm, and a bio­chem­i­cal lab­o­ra­tory. All of it is cutting-​​edge technology.

There’s a prac­ti­cal ben­e­fit to think about. The tech­nol­ogy to do some­thing like this did not exist before the Mars Sci­ence Lab­o­ra­tory was designed and built. We now have new soft­ware capa­bil­i­ties, new bio­chem­i­cal med­ical advances, new robotic tech, and all of it specif­i­cally because of this mission.

But, like I said, that’s not why we do it.

The Curios­ity Rover will land in Gale Crater, a part of Mars dif­fer­ent from places we’ve put pre­vi­ous lan­ders. Pre­vi­ous sites were cho­sen for ease of land­ing. Gale Crater was not. It was cho­sen for its geo­logic his­tory, revealed by our ear­lier Mars orbiters. The processes that formed Gale Crater include not only meteor impact, but sed­i­ment lay­er­ing from what is likely a truly ancient lake.

The pre­vi­ous land­ing sites were cho­sen because they are flat and dry and easy to set down on — rather like an arc­tic desert. Noth­ing could live there, and very likely, noth­ing ever has.

Gale Crater, on the other hand, could well have been a place where liv­ing things once thrived, per­haps a cou­ple of bil­lion years ago. The pre­vi­ous Mars lan­ders were not designed to search for the rem­nants of life. Curios­ity was. With this mis­sion, we have a good chance of dis­cov­er­ing whether life ever existed on Mars. We may learn how likely it is that Earth is home to the only liv­ing beings in the Universe.

The Uni­verse is big. Really, really big. If we’re the only liv­ing things here, it’s an awful waste of space. If there is a god, then he (or she, or it, or them) is incred­i­bly inef­fi­cient. And if there is no god, then we are an acci­dent on a vastly Cos­mic scale.

On the other hand, if two worlds within one tiny solar sys­tem — one sys­tem out of per­haps a hun­dred bil­lion within our galaxy, which is one out of maybe a tril­lion galax­ies — if two worlds out of the tiny sam­ple we have avail­able both have the capac­ity for life, then that vir­tu­ally assures us that life not only exists, but is plen­ti­ful, through­out this unimag­in­ably vast Cosmos.

Of what value is that knowl­edge, prac­ti­cal or oth­er­wise? Will it affect job growth, or whether Iran gets The Bomb? Does it have any­thing to do with the price of gaso­line, or with the next win­ner of Amer­i­can Idol? Does in impact the lat­est celebrity divorce?

It’s hard to say. Chaos The­ory and the But­ter­fly Effect are top­ics for another time. For now: there is a direct impact on reli­gious notions, on philo­soph­i­cal ideas, per­haps on the way we see our­selves. No one can deny that, for good or ill, reli­gion impacts pol­i­tics, nor that pol­i­tics impacts daily life. If we truly had an under­stand­ing of the size of our uni­verse, and of our place in it (are we unique, or are we com­mon?), I find it hard to imag­ine this knowl­edge wouldn’t affect how we think about issues like global cli­mate change or pro­vid­ing med­ical assis­tance to the poor. Do we risk destroy­ing the only instance of life in the Uni­verse? If not — do we want the rest of the Uni­verse to know how truly stu­pid we are?

Maybe there will be “prac­ti­cal ben­e­fit” from reach­ing for the Stars. Maybe not. Per­son­ally, I don’t care. That’s not why we do it.

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  1. Won­der­ful arti­cle, DC. :-)

    “It may give some prac­ti­cal results, but that’s not why we do it.” I’ll remem­ber that line from Feyn­man, because it applies to so many things that we do (and should do).

    I’ll also be watch­ing the results of the Curios­ity rover, not for any prac­ti­cal rea­sons, but for the sense of won­der and curios­ity. Because it makes me ask, “What if?”

  2. “
     The real value of space sci­ence is not prac­ti­cal, unless learn­ing about your­self, about real­ity, about how the uni­verse actu­ally works, is practical.“

    And vel­cro, don’t for­get the velcro!

  3. And vel­cro, don’t for­get the velcro!

    Espe­cially the her­maph­ro­ditic kind, which looks like some­thing DrFun­guy would research. :)

  4. Ear ther­mome­ters, cord­less tools, water filters …

    Hey, the 60s weren’t so bad after all, plus there was no sex­ting er tex­ting! :)

    Tech­nol­ogy adnvanc­ing faster than the human mind can process notwithstanding.

    >

    Let me rephrase:

    Tech­nol­ogy adnvanc­ing faster than most human minds can process notwithstanding.

    Beam me up Scotty. There’s no intel­li­gent life on this planet …

  5. I think, far from being a side issue, that  this lies at the very core of pol­i­tics, and it all comes down (with truly exquis­ite par­al­lelism ;-) ) to one thing… Curios­ity!

    It is no coin­ci­dence that only 6% of sci­en­tists describe them­selves as Repub­li­can, while 55% say they are Democ­rats. That’s a 9–1 ratio.

    And the rea­son for that is curios­ity, which is what sci­ence is all about but which also deter­mines our polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion. Con­ser­v­a­tives are not all that curi­ous. Curios­ity leads to explo­ration and ques­tion­ing, which leads to change, which they deeply fear. The strongly con­ser­v­a­tive mind­set is more com­fort­able with a set­tled dogma, an estab­lished belief sys­tem, and a rigid author­i­tar­ian approach ded­i­cated to pre­serv­ing “the way things have always been.”

    Lib­er­als, OTOH,  are quest­ing, rest­less and curi­ous… some­times to the point of seem­ing peri­patetic and fickle. They don’t fear change, they wel­come it, which makes them open to spec­u­la­tion, cre­ation, adaptation.

    It was George Bernard Shaw who first said: “Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?” But when JFK quoted Shaw in his famous speech on space explo­ration, I think he was talk­ing specif­i­cally about the con­trast­ing mind­sets of con­ser­v­a­tives and liberals.

  6. Good insight Fili.

    This helps me under­stand my father-​​in-​​law who is a Ph.D. engi­neer and (by Cana­dian stan­dards, con­ser­v­a­tive). I am con­tin­u­ally sur­prised by his lack of curios­ity and the nar­row focus of his knowl­edge. He is really more engi­neer than sci­en­tist, which goes with (sort-​​of) con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics and, by my stan­dards, nar­row inter­ests in science.

  7. @DrFunguy

    My father is also a con­ser­v­a­tive engi­neer, and I have like­wise noticed a sim­i­lar nar­row focus of inter­ests and lack of curios­ity beyond that. He’s bril­liant in his field and very intel­li­gent, but rarely curi­ous. He likes things to be very sta­ble, con­sis­tent, and predictable.

    I think fil­istro over­gen­er­al­izes (as she often does), but the points she makes about the ten­den­cies towards curios­ity vs. change avoid­ance are cer­tainly help­ful for illu­mi­nat­ing a pos­si­ble rea­son for alter­na­tive per­spec­tives. And, for those who do want change, under­stand­ing that curios­ity gap can be impor­tant in reach­ing out to those who resist change.

    Don’t you ever just won­der why? For some peo­ple, no, they really don’t.

  8. @Mac… I think fil­istro over­gen­er­al­izes (as she often does),

    I know, I know. I’m a broad-​​brush, big-​​picture kind of girl. ;-)

    In fact I am bur­dened with a hus­band who fol­lows me around, dili­gently cor­rect­ing my mis­state­ments, nar­row­ing my gen­er­al­iza­tions and qual­i­fy­ing my exag­ger­a­tions. It’s mad­den­ing. I would have dumped him years ago if he weren’t just so damn cute.

  9. :) Yeah, there have been a lot of spin-​​offs from space research. I’ve got some con­ser­v­a­tive friends who insist Amer­i­can busi­nesses would have come up with those things any­way, even with­out gub­mint invest­ing in space. I point out that no, busi­nesses didn’t come up with these things until the space pro­gram. They get all alternate-​​universe on me, “You never know what would have hap­pened if gub­mint hadn’t spent so much of Our Money!”

    Of course, lib­er­als have their own prob­lems with space research. “Why send so much money to the Moon? Let’s use it instead to build more schools!” I try o point out that not a penny of it ever went to the Moon. All of it went to jobs right here on Earth, and a lot of it went to col­leges for research that we needed to solve the prob­lems in get­ting to the Moon — which means yes, some of it did go to build­ing schools.

    And as for so much money — The FY2013 NASA bud­get request is $17.7 bil­lion, which is a lit­tle over one half of one per­cent of the Fed­eral bud­get. For the aver­age Amer­i­can tax­payer, that’s about 18 cents a day. The Amer­i­can Recov­ery and Rein­vest­ment Act of 2009 would have funded NASA for nearly 45 years. This isn’t expen­sive stuff.

  10. @filistro

    I think your hus­band and I could be good friends. ;-)

    @DC

    I like your response to “Why don’t we spend that money on schools?” You make a very good point about how that money often does end up at uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges, fur­ther­ing sci­en­tific edu­ca­tion while fos­ter­ing tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments that have broader soci­etal appli­ca­tions. Awesome!

  11. In fact I am bur­dened with a hus­band who fol­lows me around,
    dili­gently cor­rect­ing my mis­state­ments, nar­row­ing my
    gen­er­al­iza­tions and qual­i­fy­ing my exaggerations.

    Does he always do that?

  13. @mclever

    Feyn­man worked at Cal­Tech which is closely asso­ci­ated with the Jet Propul­sion  Lab­o­ra­tory (JPL) in Cal­i­for­nia. A lot of CalTech’s fund­ing comes from NASA.

  14. I just shocked myself when I com­pared NASA fund­ing to ARRA. Almost the entire cost of our space pro­gram, manned and unmanned, from the day that John Kennedy set us on the course to the Moon until today — nearly all of it, maybe 80% — could have been paid for by ARRA alone.

    Okay, ARRA was a lot of money. NASA was a lot of sci­ence. Get­ting to the Moon was a BFD, and we did it on a shoestring.

  15. @DC

    I’m very famil­iar with CalTech’s asso­ci­a­tion with JPL, con­sid­er­ing that I have sev­eral friends from my spouse’s time at Cal­Tech who are cur­rent JPL employ­ees. One friend (and fel­low bridge player) couldn’t tell me much about what he did… Another of my friends is a chemist who does work in com­bus­tion. (Fire!) But she (wisely) never let me see her lab… I’m per­haps a lit­tle too curi­ous about some things? :-)

  16. :)

    I thought I’d recalled you had a con­nec­tion to Cal­Tech and JPL. It needed to be brought up again.

    My kid brother went to Cal­Tech. As a present once he gave me a copy of The Feyn­man Lec­tures. Great light reading.

  17. @DC

    “we did it on a shoestring.”

    And today, some folks want to cut gov­ern­ment money to sci­ence and research. While simul­ta­ne­ously lament­ing that Amer­ica is falling behind in STEM fields. Go figure.

    One of the things that a project like the moon land­ing does (besides pro­vid­ing a rea­son for fund­ing) is that it gives sci­en­tists focus and direc­tion. There’s some­thing to be said for extem­po­ra­ne­ous what-​​ifs and gen­eral explo­ration, but giv­ing research a def­i­nite goal has a way of focus­ing that all that cre­ativ­ity and explo­ration to a pur­pose which can drive advance­ments for­ward by leaps and bounds that might take a much more mean­der­ing path with­out such clear objec­tives. Giv­ing sci­en­tists a spe­cific prob­lem to solve can trans­form the impos­si­ble into reality.

  20. fil­istro,

    I am bur­dened with a hus­band who fol­lows me around, dili­gently cor­rect­ing my mis­state­ments, nar­row­ing my gen­er­al­iza­tions and qual­i­fy­ing my exaggerations.

    No won­der you like me so much.

  21. I would have dumped him years ago if he weren’t just so damn cute.

    Always sus­pected fili was quite ratio­nal when it came to per­sonal rela­tion­ships. Must also be why Hillary is still w/​Bill. :D

    >

    we did it on a shoestring

    Shep­ard and Glenn often joked about being launched on a space­ship man­u­fac­tured by the govt. con­trac­tor who had the low­est bid. :)

    A local doc­u­men­tary from July, 2009 about Ohio’s con­tri­bu­tion to the space program.

    You wanna go to the moon, Alice?

  22. @Michael.. No won­der you like me so much.

    LOL! Now that you men­tion it, there ARE some really annoy­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties there.…

    Oh c’mon, all you anal-​​compulsive dat­a­phobes. The world needs at least a few Big Thinkers who don’t get all bogged down in pesky details like truth and accuracy.

    Also, I think I deserve some credit for sad­dling myself with a per­sonal life­long truth-​​filter who accom­pa­nies me every­where and seri­ously cramps my style. (No way I could ever let him get any­where near Mac, though. I’m afraid he would just adore that girl ;-)

  23. Monotreme,

    My favorite Feyn­man movie is an unrec­og­nized gem called Infin­ity.

    I saw it, but I thought it took way to long to get to the end.

  24. @mclever,

    I was jok­ing about “light read­ing.” You need cal­cu­lus at least to make sense of it. But every­thing you ever wanted to know about physics is in there — at least, physics as of about 1995 or so. You will learn rel­a­tiv­ity the­ory inside out. It’s a mindblower.

  25. fil­istro,

    The world needs at least a few Big Thinkers who don’t get all bogged down in pesky details like truth and accuracy.

    Absolutely. As long as they don’t get hung up on the Big Ideas to the point where they can’t com­pre­hend why some of those pesky details make a Big Idea col­lapse like a house of cards.

    That’s one thing I have always admired about Bill Gates. He is lit­er­ally the only per­son I’m aware of who can simul­ta­ne­ously hold the Big Idea and all the freakin lit­tle details in his head at one time. It’s scary how good he is at that.

  26. @Michael… He is lit­er­ally the only per­son I’m aware of who can simul­ta­ne­ously hold the Big Idea and all the freakin lit­tle details in his head at one time. It’s scary how good he is at that.

    Now, that’s an inter­est­ing thought. I won­der if vision and atten­tion to detail are really mutu­ally exclsuive in the nor­mal brain… like try­ing to trace a cir­cle in the air clock­wise with your right foot, while simul­ta­ne­ously trac­ing one counter-​​clockwise with your right hand.

    Maybe it’s a freak­ish skill like mirror-​​writing. Because I gotta say, I know quite a few supremely gifted and cre­ative Big Thinkers, and most of them aren’t smart enough to come in out of the rain.

  28. Had an instruc­tor in com­puter school who could add and sub­tract base 16 “hex” in his head. He also had a pleas­ant personality …

  29. Feyn­man also was an ama­teur safe­cracker. Dur­ing the Man­hat­tan Project, he would break into secu­rity safes and leave “I was here” notes.

    Drove Leslie Groves’ secu­rity peo­ple CRAZY.

    Also, don’t for­get the space pen that mil­lions was spent devel­op­ing so our astro­nauts could write in zero grav­ity, and we now use to write upside down. Of course, the Sovi­ets used the prac­ti­cal Russ­ian mind­set and they used PENCILS.

  30. @DC

    You need cal­cu­lus at least to make sense of it. But every­thing you ever wanted to know about physics is in there…

    Good thing I had a cou­ple of years of cal­cu­lus in HS plus three more years of advanced math­e­mat­ics in col­lege, plus a physics class or two or three from the engi­neer­ing school. I might be a bit rusty, con­sid­er­ing that my career makes absolutely no use of higher math, but per­haps the book can serve as a refresher.

    I think I’ll still put it on my wish­list. :-) It’s piqued my curios­ity now, and as you so elo­quently point out in your arti­cle, there’s absolutely no prac­ti­cal rea­son for it, but that’s not why I’ll read it.

  31. @mclever,

    :) I just didn’t want you com­ing back and say­ing, “Hey! This wasn’t what you said!”

    Actu­ally, I sus­pected my ref­er­ence to math would make the books more tan­ta­liz­ing for you.

  32. Max,

    I love that story about pens and pen­cils. What usu­ally gets left out, though, is the rea­son NASA rejected pen­cils, which is that they didn’t want the lit­tle wooden and lead shav­ings float­ing around the inside of the cap­sules. It’s dan­ger­ous, and  too eas­ily inhaled. I don’t know how the Rus­sians solved that problem.

  33. Max,

    don’t for­get the space pen that mil­lions was spent devel­op­ing so our astro­nauts could write in zero grav­ity, and we now use to write upside down. Of course, the Sovi­ets used the prac­ti­cal Russ­ian mind­set and they used PENCILS.

    That’s not true. And the real story is bet­ter than the myth, IMO.

  34. mac,
    Put Feyn­man Lec­tures near the top of your wish list.  They were one of the first non-​​textbook book pur­chases I ever bought, although I had to scour used book­stores at var­i­ous cam­puses to find them.  I re-​​read them fairly regularly.

  35. Thanks for the tip, short­chain. :-)   I’ve added the Feyn­man Lec­tures to my list as “high­est” pri­or­ity. Now, I’ve just gotta wait for Christ­mas, since it’s already past my birth­day. Or maybe I’ll treat myself to a “back to school spe­cial” when classes start back up this fall.

    I always enjoy read­ing books that make sci­ence inter­est­ing and acces­si­ble, though I admit that, for a non-​​scientist, I’m a bit bet­ter than the aver­age lay reader. I remem­ber in school when other stu­dents were always ask­ing, “But what good is this?” or “When will I ever use this stuff?” Hav­ing a planned, prac­ti­cal use for the mate­r­ial has almost never been my moti­va­tion for read­ing some­thing. Curios­ity alone usu­ally suffices.

    Yes, I’m very prag­matic about many things, but I also value the mind-​​broadening skills gained by stok­ing my sense of wonder.