Blog 21

                In part five of the book “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” Adventures of a Curious Character, some of the most significant and interesting events during Feynman’s time as a physicist after the war were discussed. The first story that Feynman tells about his trip to Japan after the war shows quite a few of his scientific virtues and how they translated into social situations. His desire for unity and diversity in science was shown through his efforts to learn about the Japanese culture and to work with Japan despite everything that happened during the war. After getting to Japan, Feynman wanted to stay at a Japanese hotel instead of an American one and had to spend almost an hour in total to try and convince the host to let him stay at one, which shows his persistence. When he got to the Japanese style hotel, his intellectual courage to face failure helped him to want to try speaking the Japanese phrases he learned and experience some of the social customs, even though that did mean he had to experience some social failure along the way when he went into the Japanese bath too early and Professor Yukawa was still in there. Despite events like with the bath occurring, he still wanted to live as a Japanese person as much as possible which included eating fish though he hated fish. Not only does this show his respect and open mindedness for experiencing cultural differences but it also again shows his persistence since he was willing to eat fish over and over. Overall, Feynman shows that the virtues a scientist has can be used in other situations other than science, especially in social situations. Most people today think that scientists are not sociable and even though they may be intelligent when it comes to science, they have little idea of how to socialize with others. Feynman not only shows that one can rise above this stereotype but also can be used as a model for scientists to encourage them by showing they can use what they already know to socialize instead of having to learn an entire new set of virtues. If scientists today used their virtues in adaptable way such as Feynman, this would shorten the gap between scientists and society or even between one scientist to another.

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