I decided when I was asked to do this that what I really wanted to talk about was my friend, Richard Feynman. I was one of the fortunate few that really did get to know him and enjoyed his presence. And I'm going to tell you about the Richard Feynman that I knew. I'm sure there are people here who could tell you about the Richard Feynman they knew, and it would probably be a different Richard Feynman.
我被邀请来演讲的时候就决定了 我真正想在这儿谈谈的 是我的好友理查德·费曼。 我是为数不多的认识他 并欣赏他的 幸运者之一。 我想描述给你们听的是我眼中的理查德·费曼 在座的各位之中 一定还有人 能说说他们眼中的理查德·费曼 那也很有可能是个很不同的理查德·费曼
Richard Feynman was a very complex man. He was a man of many, many parts. He was, of course, foremost, a very, very, very great scientist. He was an actor. You saw him act. I also had the good fortune to be in those lectures, up in the balcony. They were fantastic. He was a philosopher. He was a drum player. He was a teacher par excellence. Richard Feynman was also a showman, an enormous showman. He was brash, irreverent. He was full of macho, a kind of macho one-upmanship. He loved intellectual battle. He had a gargantuan ego. But the man had, somehow, a lot of room at the bottom. And what I mean by that is a lot of room, in my case -- I can't speak for anybody else, but in my case -- a lot of room for another big ego. Well, not as big as his, but fairly big. I always felt good with Dick Feynman.
理查德·费曼是个很复杂的人 他是个由许多部分组成的人 当然,首先要提的自然是 他是个非常非常伟大的科学家。 他是个演员。你们看过他的演出。 我也有幸听过他讲课, 就在阳台上。 它们太棒了。 他是个哲学家, 他是个鼓手, 他是个超群的教师, 理查德·费曼也是个善于引起人们注意的人物, 是个极其引人注目的人物。 他性情急躁,无礼-- 他极其好斗, 总能超越他的竞争者。 他钟爱智斗。 他极为自负。 但怎么说呢,他 还留下了不少空间。 我的意思是 在我看来,还有很大的空间 -- 我不能说别人也这样看-- 但我认为, 指的是容纳更多自负的空间。 比他已经拥有的少些 但绝对够多 狄克·费曼总让我感觉不错 (注:狄克是理查德的昵称)
It was always fun to be with him. He always made me feel smart. How can somebody like that make you feel smart? Somehow he did. He made me feel smart. He made me feel he was smart. He made me feel we were both smart, and the two of us could solve any problem whatever. And in fact, we did sometimes do physics together. We never published a paper together, but we did have a lot of fun.
和他在一起总是很有意思 他总让我觉得自己才智非凡 像他那么聪明的人怎么还会让你觉得自己聪明呢? 但他做到了 他让我感到自己很聪明 也让我感到他很聪明 他让我觉得我们俩都很聪明 只要有我们俩 任何难题都能被解决 有时候我们的确一起讨论物理问题 我们从来没有共同发表过论文 但我们讨论的很开心
He loved to win, win these little macho games we would sometimes play. And he didn't only play them with me, but with all sorts of people. He would almost always win. But when he didn't win, when he lost, he would laugh and seem to have just as much fun as if he had won.
在我们有时候玩的 那些男人的斗智游戏中 他总喜欢赢 不只是和我 他和各种各样的人玩这些游戏 他几乎总能获胜 但当他没赢 当他输了的时候 他会大笑 并表现出和他赢了的时候 玩的一样畅快的心情
I remember once he told me a story about a joke the students played on him. I think it was for his birthday -- they took him for lunch to a sandwich place in Pasadena. It may still exist; I don't know. Celebrity sandwiches was their thing. You could get a Marilyn Monroe sandwich. You could get a Humphrey Bogart sandwich. The students went there in advance, and arranged that they'd all order Feynman sandwiches. One after another, they came in and ordered Feynman sandwiches. Feynman loved this story. He told me this story, and he was really happy and laughing. When he finished the story, I said to him, "Dick, I wonder what would be the difference between a Feynman sandwich and a Susskind sandwich." And without skipping a beat at all, he said, "Well, they'd be about the same. The only difference is a Susskind sandwich would have a lot more ham." "Ham" as in bad actor.
我记得有一次他告诉我一件事 那是他的学生们戏弄他的一个小故事 好像是为了庆祝他的生日吧 他的学生们带他去吃午饭 他们把他带到帕萨迪纳市 一个吃三明治的地方 也许那地方现在都还在呢 “明星三明治”是他们的特色 你能点玛丽莲·梦露三明治 也能点亨弗莱·鲍嘉三明治 那些学生们事先去了那里 并安排着大伙儿都点费曼三明治 他们一个接着一个 全都点了费曼三明治 费曼很喜欢这个故事 他对我讲这件事时非常高兴 开怀大笑着 他讲完这个故事后 我对他说: “狄克 我就是在琢磨 费曼三明治和苏士侃三明治会有什么区别” 他不假思索的回答: “它们大致上差不多吧 唯一的区别是苏士侃三明治里会多很多火腿 (注:火腿在英语里有笨拙演员的意思) 火腿 指的是笨拙演员
(Laughter)
(笑)
Well, I happened to have been very quick that day, and I said, "Yeah, but a lot less baloney."
那天我的思维特别敏捷 便说道: “对啊 但少很多大香肠” (注:大香肠在英语里有胡扯的意思)
(Laughter)
(笑)
(Applause)
告诉大家一句实话
The truth of the matter is that a Feynman sandwich had a load of ham, but absolutely no baloney. What Feynman hated worse than anything else was intellectual pretense -- phoniness, false sophistication, jargon. I remember sometime during the mid-'80s, Dick and I and Sidney Coleman would meet a couple of times up in San Francisco -- at some very rich guy's house -- up in San Francisco for dinner. And the last time the rich guy invited us, he also invited a couple of philosophers. These guys were philosophers of mind. Their specialty was the philosophy of consciousness. And they were full of all kinds of jargon. I'm trying to remember the words -- "monism," "dualism," categories all over the place. I didn't know what those meant, neither did Dick or Sydney, for that matter.
在费曼三明治里 火腿绝不占少数 而大香肠压根就没有 费曼平生最厌恶的 便是学问上的做作 虚假 故弄玄虚 术语 我还记得在80年代发生的一些事 那是80年代中期 狄克 我 还有西德尼·科尔曼 常常在旧金山 旧金山的某些富人家里 共享晚餐 那次 某个富人在邀请我们的同时 也邀请了一些哲学家 他们是研究大脑的哲学家 专长是意识哲学 话语中满是术语 让我想想他们都用了哪些词汇 “一元论” “二元论”之类的 涉及的范畴铺天盖地 我不知道这些词什么意思 狄克也不知道 西德尼对这方面也没有了解
And what did we talk about? Well, what do you talk about when you talk about minds? There's one obvious thing to talk about: Can a machine become a mind? Can you build a machine that thinks like a human being that is conscious? We sat around and talked about this -- we of course never resolved it. But the trouble with the philosophers is that they were philosophizing when they should have been science-ophizing. It's a scientific question, after all. And this was a very, very dangerous thing to do around Dick Feynman.
那我们谈了什么呢? 以大脑为中心我们能探讨些什么呢? 有一件事 明显能被讨论 机器能成为大脑吗? 我们能否造出一个 以人的方式思考的 有自我意识的机器? 我们坐在那儿谈的就是这个 当然我们并没得出结论 但问题就在于 那些哲学家 该把问题科学化的时候 也只知道哲学化 说到底 这是个科学上的问题 他们在狄克·费曼面前这样做 是非常非常危险的
(Laughter)
Feynman let them have it -- both barrels, right between the eyes. It was brutal; it was funny -- ooh, it was funny. But it was really brutal. He really popped their balloon. But the amazing thing was -- Feynman had to leave a little early; he wasn't feeling too well, so he left a little bit early. And Sidney and I were left there with the two philosophers. And the amazing thing is these guys were flying. They were so happy. They had met the great man; they had been instructed by the great man; they had an enormous amount of fun having their faces shoved in the mud ... And it was something special. I realized there was something just extraordinary about Feynman, even when he did what he did.
费曼当头痛击 一股脑儿的痛斥弄得他们无言以对 他做的够残忍的 但也很搞笑 真的太搞笑了 不过他的做法真的很残忍 他们被说得彻底泄了气 但令人惊讶的事情发生了 费曼要提早离开 他感觉不太好 所以早走了些 就剩下了西德尼 我 还有那两个哲学家 令人惊讶的是 他们俩兴高采烈 感觉飘飘然的 他们见到了这伟大的人物 他们被这伟大的人物指导了 虽然被弄的无话可说 他们觉得有趣极了 这太特别了 虽说费曼就这么做了 但我意识到 他就是有些太过与众不同的地方
Dick -- he was my friend; I did call him Dick -- Dick and I had a little bit of a rapport. I think it may have been a special rapport that he and I had. We liked each other; we liked the same kind of things. I also like the intellectual macho games. Sometimes I would win, mostly he would win, but we both enjoyed them. And Dick became convinced at some point that he and I had some kind of similarity of personality. I don't think he was right. I think the only point of similarity between us is we both like to talk about ourselves. But he was convinced of this. And the man was incredibly curious. And he wanted to understand what it was and why it was that there was this funny connection.
狄克是我的好友 我就称呼他为狄克 狄克和我相处的不错 我觉得我们之间的关系还挺特殊的 我们喜欢对方 我们喜欢的东西也类似 我也很喜欢男人的那些智斗游戏 我有时会赢 但几乎都是他赢的 但我们俩都玩得很尽兴 狄克渐渐开始确信 他与我的性格有着某些共同点 我觉得他错了 我觉得我们俩之间唯一的共同点 在于我们都喜欢谈论自己 但他很确定 他有一颗好奇心 他总是特别的好奇 他总想理解那是什么 为什么是那样的 还有这两者之间的联系
And one day, we were walking. We were in France, in Les Houches. We were up in the mountains, 1976. And Feynman said to me, "Leonardo ..." The reason he called me "Leonardo" is because we were in Europe, and he was practicing his French.
1976年的那天 我们在法国苏世正走着 那时我们在山上 费曼对我说: “李奥纳特” 他称呼我为李奥纳特 是因为我们在欧洲
(Laughter)
他在练习他的法语
And he said, "Leonardo, were you closer to your mother or your father when you were a kid?" I said, "Well, my real hero was my father. He was a working man, had a fifth-grade education. He was a master mechanic, and he taught me how to use tools. He taught me all sorts of things about mechanical things. He even taught me the Pythagorean theorem. He didn't call it the hypotenuse, he called it the shortcut distance."
他说:“李奥纳特 你小的时候和你妈妈还是爸爸 关系近些?” 我答道:“我爸爸是我心中的英雄 他是个工人 只受过小学五年级的教育 他是个很棒的机械工 也正是他教会我使用工具的 关于机械的事情 他教了我很多很多 他甚至教了我勾股定理 他没用‘斜边’这个词 他叫它‘抄近路’的距离”
And Feynman's eyes just opened up. He went off like a lightbulb. And he said that he had had basically exactly the same relationship with his father. In fact, he had been convinced at one time that to be a good physicist, it was very important to have had that kind of relationship with your father. I apologize for the sexist conversation here, but this is the way it really happened.
费曼睁大了他的双眼 他像个灯泡一样亮了起来 他说 他和他爸爸的关系 几乎和我所说的 一模一样 其实他从什么时候起就开始确信 要成为一个好的物理学家 那样的父子关系 是十分必要的 抱歉 我说的内容含有性别歧视的味道 但这的确是事实经过
He said he had been absolutely convinced that this was necessary, a necessary part of the growing up of a young physicist. Being Dick, he, of course, wanted to check this. He wanted to go out and do an experiment.
他说他彻头彻尾的确信 这是一个小物理学家 成功过程中不可或缺的一部分 作为狄克 当然他想要确认一下这事 他想去做个实验
(Laughter)
所以他做了
Well, he did. He went out and did an experiment. He asked all his friends that he thought were good physicists, "Was it your mom or your pop that influenced you?" They were all men, and to a man, every single one of them said, "My mother."
他去做了个实验 他问了所有在他看来是好物理学家的朋友 “是你妈妈还是你爸爸影响的你?” 他问的都是男人 而每一个男人的回答都是 “我妈妈” (笑)
(Laughter)
所以这套理论就被扔进历史的垃圾桶里了
There went that theory, down the trash can of history.
(Laughter)
但他的确因为终于遇到了一个
But he was very excited that he had finally met somebody who had the same experience with his father as he had with his father. And for some time, he was convinced this was the reason we got along so well. I don't know. Maybe. Who knows?
有着和他相似的父子关系的人 而激动不已 他也曾确信 这便是 我们相处的那么融洽的原因 或许是这样吧 又有谁知道呢?
But let me tell you a little bit about Feynman the physicist. Feynman's style -- no, "style" is not the right word. "Style" makes you think of the bow tie he might have worn, or the suit he was wearing. It's something much deeper than that, but I can't think of another word for it. Feynman's scientific style was always to look for the simplest, most elementary solution to a problem that was possible. If it wasn't possible, you had to use something fancier. No doubt, part of this was his great joy and pleasure in showing people that he could think more simply than they could. But he also deeply believed, he truly believed, that if you couldn't explain something simply, you didn't understand it. In the 1950s, people were trying to figure out how superfluid helium worked.
好 让我来和你们说说 作为一个物理学家的费曼 费曼的风格 不对 “风格”这个词用得不好 “风格”会让你联想到他或许戴过的领结 或是他穿过的西装 我想说的是比这些远远要深的东西 但我想不出第二个词来形容它 费曼在科学上的风格 永远是尽他所能 在可能中寻找最简单 最基本的解题方法 如果不可能的话 那你就得用些花俏的办法了 但毫无疑问的是 让大家看到他能比他们想得更简单 对费曼来说 是他的一大乐趣和满足 但他也深信着 坚信着 如果你无法简单地解释一样东西 那就说明你没有真正理解它 50年代的时候 人们正研究着 超流态氦是怎么回事
There was a theory. It was due to a Russian mathematical physicist. It was a complicated theory; I'll tell you what it was soon enough. It was a terribly complicated theory, full of very difficult integrals and formulas and mathematics and so forth. And it sort of worked, but it didn't work very well. The only way it worked is when the helium atoms were very, very far apart. And unfortunately, the helium atoms in liquid helium are right on top of each other.
一位俄罗斯物理学家 有那么一套理论 复杂的理论 我等下就告诉你们那是什么理论 那是一套十分复杂的理论 里面充满了复杂的积分和方程 还有各种各样的数学 这理论行得通 但并不那么好用 只有氦原子互相之间 距离非常远的时候 这理论才管用 氦原子之间必须要有很远的一段距离 可惜在液体氦里的氦原子 根本就都叠在一起
Feynman decided, as a sort of amateur helium physicist, that he would try to figure it out. He had an idea, a very clear idea. He would try to figure out what the quantum wave function of this huge number of atoms looked like. He would try to visualize it, guided by a small number of simple principles. The small number of simple principles were very, very simple. The first one was that when helium atoms touch each other, they repel. The implication of that is that the wave function has to go to zero, it has to vanish when the helium atoms touch each other. The other fact is that in the ground state -- the lowest energy state of a quantum system -- the wave function is always very smooth; it has the minimum number of wiggles.
作为一个“业余”氦物理学家 费曼决定给它一试 他的想法十分明确 他决定去找出 描述那么大数量的原子的 波函数 通过仅仅几条简单的原理 他要试着把它形象化 这仅仅几条简单的原理非常非常的简单 第一条是 当两个氦原子相碰时 它们会相斥 这也就意味着波函数会归零 只要氦原子互相碰撞 波函数必须归零 另一条是 在基态 也就是一个量子系统最低能量的状态下 波函数总会显得特别平滑 它的波动将处于最小值
So he sat down -- and I imagine he had nothing more than a simple piece of paper and a pencil -- and he tried to write down, and did write down, the simplest function that he could think of, which had the boundary conditions that the wave function vanish when things touch and is smooth in between. He wrote down a simple thing -- so simple, in fact, that I suspect a really smart high-school student who didn't even have calculus could understand what he wrote down. The thing was, that simple thing that he wrote down explained everything that was known at the time about liquid helium, and then some.
他就这样坐下来 我想他除了一张纸 还有一支笔 什么都没有吧 他试着 并成功的写下 他能想到的最简单的函数 也就是有着 相碰就会归零 和除边界之外 其余完全平滑 这两条边界条件的波函数 他简单的把它写了出来 简单就简单到 让我怀疑一个连微积分 都没学过的 聪明的高中学生 也能理解他写下来的是什么 但也正是他写的这个如此简单的函数 解释了当时我们对液体氦了解的一切 甚至更多
I've always wondered whether the professionals -- the real professional helium physicists -- were just a little bit embarrassed by this. They had their super-powerful technique, and they couldn't do as well. Incidentally, I'll tell you what that super-powerful technique was. It was the technique of Feynman diagrams.
我常常怀疑 那些专业的 真正的氦物理学家 是不是会因为这个而感到羞愧 他们虽然有着他们超级强大的方法 但没能取得费曼那样的成功 让我顺便告诉你们那超级强大的方法是什么吧 是费曼图解法
(Laughter)
(笑)
He did it again in 1968. In 1968, in my own university -- I wasn't there at the time -- they were exploring the structure of the proton. The proton is obviously made of a whole bunch of little particles; this was more or less known. And the way to analyze it was, of course, Feynman diagrams. That's what Feynman diagrams were constructed for -- to understand particles. The experiments that were going on were very simple: you simply take the proton, and you hit it really sharply with an electron. This was the thing the Feynman diagrams were for.
1968年 他又这么做了一次 1968年 在我的大学里 我当时不在那里 但就在1968年 人们正在研究质子的结构 显然 质子是由 许多小粒子组成的 那时大家对此多少有些了解 要分析这些 我们自然少不了费曼图解法 费曼图解法就是为了这个才被绘制出来的 为了了解粒子 当时的实验非常简单 你只要将质子 猛烈的撞向电子即可 费曼图解法就是派这个用场的
The only problem was that Feynman diagrams are complicated. They're difficult integrals. If you could do all of them, you would have a very precise theory, but you couldn't -- they were just too complicated. People were trying to do them. You could do a one-loop diagram. Don't worry about one loop. One loop, two loops -- maybe you could do a three-loop diagram, but beyond that, you couldn't do anything.
唯一的问题在于 费曼图解法很复杂 他们是复杂的积分 如果都能被算出来的话 我们便有了一套精确的理论 但如果算不出的话 那它们就太复杂了 人们试着去计算 你可以画一圈图 一圈图不是问题 一圈图 二圈图 也许你能画得出三圈图 但还想再画就不可能了
Feynman said, "Forget all of that. Just think of the proton as an assemblage, a swarm, of little particles." He called them "partons." He said, "Just think of it as a swarm of partons moving real fast." Because they're moving real fast, relativity says the internal motions go very slow. The electron hits it suddenly -- it's like taking a very sudden snapshot of the proton. What do you see? You see a frozen bunch of partons. They don't move, and because they don't move during the course of the experiment, you don't have to worry about how they're moving. You don't have to worry about the forces between them. You just get to think of it as a population of frozen partons." This was the key to analyzing these experiments. Extremely effective. Somebody said the word "revolution" is a bad word. I suppose it is, so I won't say "revolution," but it certainly evolved very, very deeply our understanding of the proton, and of particles beyond that.
费曼说:“别管这些了 就直接把质子 想成小粒子的集合体 想成一群小粒子 就叫它们部分子” 他把它们称为部分子 他说:“就把它想成一群 迅速移动着的小粒子” 因为它们的移动速度极快 相对论告诉我们 它们的内部运动非常缓慢 电子突然撞了上来 就像是突然之间给质子来了张快照一样 你能看见什么? 你看到的是一堆一动不动的部分子 它们没有在动 也正因为它们没在动 在整个实验过程中 你不用管它们是怎么运动的 你不用考虑它们之间的力 你只要去想 一大群 一动不动的部分子 这便是分析这些实验最关键的部分 太有效了 它其实—— 有些人说“改革”是个不好的词 我想是吧 那我就不用“改革” 但它绝对从很深的程度上 推进了我们对质子 以及更多粒子的了解
Well, I had some more that I was going to tell you about my connection with Feynman, what he was like, but I see I have exactly half a minute. So I think I'll just finish up by saying: I actually don't think Feynman would have liked this event. I think he would have said, "I don't need this." But ...
我本来准备告诉你们的 还有不少关于我和费曼的事情 想说说他是怎样个人 但看来我只剩下半分钟了 我最后想说的是 我其实并不觉得费曼会喜欢这活动 我想他会说: “我不需要这个”
(Laughter)
那我们该怎样给予费曼荣誉呢?
How should we honor Feynman? How should we really honor Feynman? I think the answer is we should honor Feynman by getting as much baloney out of our own sandwiches as we can.
该怎样真正给予费曼荣誉呢? 我认为答案是 我们应该尽全力扔掉 自己三明治里的大香肠 并以此给予费曼荣誉 谢谢
Thank you.
(掌声)
(Applause)