The next morning, over breakfast, I reported the results of all these experiments to the other guys at the table. I told them all the things I could do while counting to myself, and said the only thing I absolutely could not do while counting to myself was talk.
One of the guys, a fella named John Tukey, said, “I don’t believe you can read, and I don’t see why you can’t talk. I’ll bet you I can talk while counting to myself, and I’ll bet you you can’t read.”
So I gave a demonstration: they gave me a book and I read it for a while, counting to myself. When I reached 60 I said, “Now!”—48 seconds, my regular time. Then I told them what I had read.
Tukey was amazed. After we checked him a few times to see what his regular time was, he started talking: “Mary had a little lamb; I can say anything I want to, it doesn’t make any difference; I don’t know what’s bothering you”—blah, blah, blah, and finally, “Okay!” He hit his time right on the nose! I couldn’t believe it!
We talked about it a while, and we discovered something. It turned out that Tukey was counting in a different way: he was visualizing a tape with numbers on it going by. He would say, “Mary had a little lamb,” and he would watch it! Well, now it was clear: he’s “looking” at his tape going by, so he can’t read, and I’m “talking” to myself when I’m counting, so I can’t speak!
After that discovery, I tried to figure out a way of reading out loud while counting—something neither of us could do. I figured I’d have to use a part of my brain that wouldn’t interfere with the seeing or speaking departments, so I decided to use my fingers, since that involved the sense of touch.
I soon succeeded in counting with my fingers and reading out loud. But I wanted the whole process to be mental, and not rely on any physical activity. So I tried to imagine the feeling of my fingers moving while I was reading out loud.
I never succeeded. I figured that was because I hadn’t practiced enough, but it might be impossible: I’ve never met anybody who can do it.
By that experience Tukey and I discovered that what goes on in different people’s heads when they think they’re doing the same thing—something as simple as counting—is different for different people. And we discovered that you can externally and objectively test how the brain works: you don’t have to ask a person how he counts and rely on his own observations of himself; instead, you observe what he can and can’t do while he counts. The test is absolute. There’s no way to beat it; no way to fake it.
It’s natural to explain an idea in terms of what you already have in your head. Concepts are piled on top of each other: this idea is taught in terms of that idea, and that idea is taught in terms of another idea, which comes from counting, which can be so different for different people!
I often think about that, especially when I’m teaching some esoteric technique such as integrating Bessel functions. When I see equations, I see the letters in colors—I don’t know why. As I’m talking, I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Emde’s book, with lighttan j’s, slightly violet-bluish n’s, and dark brown x’s flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students.
Getting Ahead
ONE TIME, back in the fifties, when I was returning from Brazil by boat, we stopped off in Trinidad for a day, so I decided to see the main city, Port of Spain. In those days, when I visited a city I was most interested in seeing the poorest sections—to see how life works at the bottom end
I spent some time off in the hills, in the Negro section of town, wandering around on foot. On the way back a taxi stopped and the driver said, “Hey, mon! You want to see the city? It only cost five biwi.”
I said, “Okay,” and got in the taxi.
The driver started right off to go up and see some palace, saying, “I’ll show you all the fancy places.”
I said, “No, thank you; that’s similar in every city. I want to see the bottom part of the city, where the poor people live. I’ve already seen the hills up there.”
“Oh!” he said, impressed. “I’ll be glad to show you around. And I have a question for you when we’re through, so I want you to look at everything carefully.”
So he took me to an East Indian neighborhood—it must have been some housing project—and he stopped in front of a house made of concrete blocks. There was practically nothing inside. A man was sitting on the front steps. “You see that man?” he said. “He has a son studyin’ medicine in Maryland.”
Then he picked up someone from the neighborhood so I could better see what they were like. It was a woman whose teeth had a lot of decay.
Further along we stopped and he introduced me to two women he admired. “They got enough money together to buy a sewing machine, and now they do sewing and tailoring work for people in the neighborhood,” he said, proudly. When he introduced me to them, he said, “This man is a professor, and what’s interesting is, he wants to see our neighborhoods.”
We saw many things, and finally the taxi driver said to me, “Now, Professor, here is my question: you see the Indian people are just as poor, and sometimes even poorer than the Negro people, but they’re getting somewhere, somehow—this man has sent his son to college; those women are building up a sewing business. But my people aren’t getting anywhere. Why is that?”
I told him, of course, that I didn’t know—which is my answer to almost every question—but he wouldn’t accept that, coming from a professor. I tried to guess at something which I thought was possible. I said, “There’s a long tradition behind life in India that comes from a religion and philosophy that is thousands of years old. And although these people are not in India, they still pass on those traditions about what’s important in life—trying to build for the future and supporting their children in the effort—which have come down to them for centuries.”
I continued, “I think that your people have unfortunately not had a chance to develop such a long tradition, or if they did, they lost it through conquest and slavery.” I don’t know if it’s true, but it was my best guess.
The taxi driver felt that it was a good observation, and said he was planning to build for the future, too: he had some money on the horses, and if he won, he would buy his own taxicab, and really do well.
I felt very sorry. I told him that betting on the horses was a bad idea, but he insisted it was the only way he could do it. He had such good intentions, but his method was going to be luck.
I wasn’t going to go on philosophizing, so he took me to a place where there was a steel band playing some great calypso music, and I had an enjoyable afternoon.
Hotel City
ONE TIME, when I was in Geneva, Switzerland, for a Physical Society meeting, I was walking around and happened to go past the United Nations buildings. I thought to myself, “Gee! I think I’ll go in and look around.” I wasn’t particularly dressed for it—I was wearing dirty pants and an old coat—but it turned out there were tours you could go on where some guy would show you around.
The tour was quite interesting, but the most striking part was the great big auditorium. You know how everything is overdone for these big international characters, so what would ordinarily be a stage or a dais was in several layers: you have to climb up whole sequences of steps to this great, big, monstrous wooden thing that you stand behind, with a big screen in back of you. In front of you are the seats. The carpets are elegant, and the big doors with brass handles at the back are beautiful. On each side of the great auditorium, up above, are windowed booths for the translators of different languages to work in. It’s a fantastic place, and I kept thinking to myself, “Gee! How it must be to give a talk in a place like this!”
Right after that, we were walking along the corridor just outside the auditorium when the guide pointed through the window and said, “You see those buildings over there that are under construction? They’ll be used for the first time at the Atoms for Peace Conference, in about six weeks.”
I suddenly remembered that Murray Gel
l-Mann and I were supposed to give talks at that conference on the present situation of high-energy physics. My talk was set for the plenary session, so I asked the guide, “Sir, where would the talks for the plenary session of that conference be?”
“Back in that room that we just came through.”
“Oh!” I said in delight. “Then I’m gonna give a speech in that room!”
The guide looked down at my dirty pants and my sloppy shirt. I realized how dumb that remark must have sounded to him, but it was genuine surprise and delight on my part.
We went along a little bit farther, and the guide said, “This is a lounge for the various delegates, where they often hold informal discussions.” There were some small, square windows in the doors to the lounge that you could look through, so people looked in. There were a few men sitting there talking.
I looked through the windows and saw Igor Tamm, a physicist from Russia that I know. “Oh!” I said. “I know that guy!” and I started through the door.
The guide screamed, “No, no! Don’t go in there!” By this time he was sure he had a maniac on his hands, but he couldn’t chase me because he wasn’t allowed to go through the door himself!
Tamm’s face lit up when he recognized me, and we talked a little bit. The guide was relieved and continued the tour without me, and I had to run to catch up.
At the Physical Society meeting my good friend Bob Bacher said to me, “Listen: it’s going to be hard to get a room when that Atoms for Peace Conference is going on. Why don’t you have the State Department arrange a room for you, if you haven’t already made a reservation?”
“Naw!” I said. “I’m not gonna have the State Department do a damn thing for me! I’ll do it myself.”
When I returned to my hotel I told them that I would be leaving in a week, but I’d be coming back at the end of summer: “Could I make a reservation now for that time?”
“Certainly! When will you be returning?”
“The second week in September…”
“Oh, we’re terribly sorry, Professor Feynman; we are already completely booked for that time.”
So I wandered off, from one hotel to another, and found they were all booked solid, six weeks ahead of time!
Then I remembered a trick I used once when I was with a physicist friend of mine, a quiet and dignified English fellow.
We were going across the United States by car, and when we got just beyond Tulsa, Oklahoma, there were supposed to be big floods up ahead. We came into this little town and we saw cars parked everywhere, with people and families in them, trying to sleep. He says, “We had better stop here. It’s clear we can go no further.”
“Aw, come on!” I say. “How do you know? Let’s see if we can do it: maybe by the time we get there, the water will be down.
“We shouldn’t waste time,” he replies. “Perhaps we can find a room in a hotel if we look for it now.”
“Aw, don’t worry about it!” I say. “Let’s go!”
We drive out of town about ten or twelve miles and come to an arroyo. Yes, even for me, there’s too much water. There’s no question: we aren’t going to try to get through that.
We turn around: my friend’s muttering about how we’ll have no chance of finding a room in a hotel now, and I tell him not to worry.
Back in town, it’s absolutely blocked with people sleeping in their cars, obviously because there are no more rooms. All the hotels must be packed. I see a small sign over a door: it says “HOTEL.” It was the kind of hotel I was familiar with in Albuquerque, when I would wander around town looking at things, waiting to see my wife at the hospital: you have to go up a flight of stairs and the office is on the first landing.
We go up the stairs to the office and I say to the manager, “We’d like a room.”
“Certainly, sir. We have one with two beds on the third floor.”
My friend is amazed: The town is packed with people sleeping in cars, and here’s a hotel that has room!
We go up to our room, and gradually it becomes clear to him: there’s no door on the room, only a hanging cloth in the doorway. The room was fairly clean, it had a sink; it wasn’t so bad. We get ready for bed.
He says, “I’ve got to pee.”
“The bathroom is down the hall.”
We hear girls giggling and walking back and forth in the hall outside, and he’s nervous. He doesn’t want to go out there.
“That’s all right; just pee in the sink,” I say.
“But that’s unsanitary.”
“Naw, it’s okay; you just turn the water on.”
“I can’t pee in the sink,” he says.
We’re both tired, so we lie down. It’s so hot that we don’t use any covers, and my friend can’t get to sleep because of the noises in the place. I kind of fall asleep a little bit.
A little later I hear a creaking of the floor nearby, and I open one eye slightly. There he is, in the dark, quietly stepping over to the sink.
Anyway, I knew a little hotel in Geneva called the Hotel City, which was one of those places with just a doorway on the street and a flight of stairs leading up to the office. There were usually some rooms available, and nobody made reservations.
I went up the stairs to the office and told the desk clerk that I’d be back in Geneva in six weeks, and I’d like to stay in their hotel: “Could I make a reservation?”
“Certainly, sir. Of course!”
The clerk wrote my name on a piece of paper—they hadn’t any book to write reservations in—and I remember the clerk trying to find a hook to put the paper on, to remember. So I had my “reservation,” and everything was fine.
I came back to Geneva six weeks later, went to the Hotel City, and they did have the room ready for me; it was on the top floor. Although the place was cheap, it was clean. (It’s Switzerland; it was clean!) There were a few holes in the bedspread, but it was a clean bedspread. In the morning they served a European breakfast in my room; they were rather delighted to have this guest who had made a reservation six weeks in advance.
Then I went over to the U.N. for the first day of the Atoms for Peace Conference. There was quite a line at the reception desk, where everyone was checking in: a woman was taking down everybody’s address and phone number so they could be reached in case there were any messages.
“Where are you staying, Professor Feynman?” she asks.
“At the Hotel City.”
“Oh, you must mean the Hotel Cité.”
“No, it’s called ‘City’: C-I-T-Y.” (Why not? We would call it “Cité” here in America, so they called it “City” in Geneva, because it sounded foreign.)
“But it isn’t on our list of hotels. Are you sure it’s ‘City’?”
“Look in the telephone book for the number. You’ll find it.”
“Oh!” she said, after checking the phone book. “My list is incomplete! Some people are still looking for a room, so perhaps I can recommend the Hotel City to them.”
She must have got the word about the Hotel City from someone, because nobody else from the conference ended up staying there. Once in a while the people at the Hotel City would receive telephone calls for me from the U.N., and would run up the two flights of stairs from the office to tell me, with some awe and excitement, to come down and answer the phone.
There’s an amusing scene I remember from the Hotel City. One night I was looking through my window out into the courtyard. Something, in a building across the courtyard, caught the corner of my eye: it looked like an upside-down bowl on the windowsill. I thought it had moved, so I watched it for a while, but it didn’t move any. Then, after a bit, it moved a little to one side. I couldn’t figure out what this thing was.
After a while I figured it out: it was a man with a pair of binoculars that he had against the windowsill for support, looking across the courtyard to the floor below me!
There’s another scene at the Hotel City which I’ll always remember, that I’d love to be able to paint: I wa
s returning one night from the conference and opened the door at the bottom of the stairway. There was the proprietor, standing there, trying to look nonchalant with a cigar in one hand while he pushed something up the stairs with the other. Farther up, the woman who brought me breakfast was pulling on this same heavy object with both hands. And at the top of the stairs, at the landing, there she was, with her fake furs on, bust sticking out, hand on her hip, imperiously waiting. Her customer was a bit drunk, and was not very capable of walking up the steps. I don’t know whether the proprietor knew that / knew what this was all about; I just walked past everything. He was ashamed of his hotel, but, of course, to me, it was delightful.
Who the Hell Is Herman?
ONE DAY I got a long-distance telephone call from an old friend in Los Alamos. She says in a very serious voice, “Richard, I have some sad news for you. Herman died.”
I’m always feeling uncomfortable that I don’t remember names and then I feel bad that I don’t pay enough attention to people. So I said, “Oh?”—trying to be quiet and serious so I could get more information, but thinking to myself, “Who the hell is Herman?”
She says, “Herman and his mother were both killed in an automobile accident near Los Angeles. Since that is where his mother is from, the funeral will be held in Los Angeles at the Rose Hills Mortuary on May 3rd at three o’clock.” Then she says, “Herman would have liked it very, very much to know that you would be one of his pallbearers.”
I still can’t remember him. I say, “Of course I’d be happy to do that.” (At least this way I’ll find out who Herman is.)
Then I get an idea: I call up the mortuary. “You’re having a funeral on May 3rd at three o’clock…”
“Which funeral do you mean: the Goldschmidt funeral, or the Parnell funeral?”
“Well, uh, I don’t know.” It still doesn’t click for me; I don’t think it’s either one of them. Finally, I say, “It might be a double funeral. His mother also died.”
'What Do You Care What Other People Think?' Page 6
