Ralph Leighton

speaker

164 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 29 May

Ralph Leighton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 2.

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Freakonomics Radio · The Vanishing Mr. Feynman (Update) · 29 May 2026 podcast

He even suggested that we should eventually be able to manipulate atoms one at a time.

Grab a hold of a single atom, do what we want with it.

I think there has been a surge in skepticism about science and about scientists and their motivation.

I don't think scientists should expect people to just believe what they say on the basis of authority.

But I think there is an unhealthy level of skepticism about the motives of scientists.

A lot of people go into science, and it's not because it's the most lucrative career they could have.

They go into it because they want to discover things, and they want to share that knowledge with colleagues and with students and with the world.

And I think that's a very admirable motivation.

And if we were interested in our own glorification or in pursuing a task because it was lucrative, there are other things we could do.

Feynman would often say the number one rule is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

If you expected science to give all the answers to the wonderful questions about what we are, where we're going, what the meaning of the universe is, and so on, then I think you could easily become disillusioned and then look for some mystic answer to these problems.

So he says, people, I mean the average person, the great majority of people, are woefully, pitifully, absolutely ignorant of the science of the world that they live in.

And an interesting question of the relation of science to modern society is just that.

Why is it possible for people to stay so woefully ignorant and yet reasonably happy in modern society?

And then he says,

but we never are invited to give an attack on faith healing or on astrology.

I suggest, maybe incorrectly and perhaps wrongly, that we are too polite.

So Feynman was interested in the role of science in society for a number of years, especially after the war, when science was used to create the atomic bomb.

And so he gave various lectures.

One of them, it's called The Value of Science.

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