Above all, in and out of science, Dr. Feynman was a curious character
-his phrase, and the double meaning was intentional. He was never
content with what he knew or what other people knew. He taught himself
how to fix radios, pick locks, draw nudes, speak Portuguese, play the
bongos and decipher Mayan hieroglyphics. He pursued knowledge without
prejudice, studying the tracking ability of ants in his bathtub and
learning enough biology to study the mutation of bacteriophages.
In his youth he experimented for months with trying to observe his
unraveling stream of consciousness at the point of falling asleep; in
his middle age he experimented with inducing out-of-body hallucinations
in a sensory-deprivation tank.
But Dr. Feynman was no mystic,
and he despised all kinds of fake learning, particularly pseudo-science.
In that category he placed a good part of modern psychology, calling it
''cargo cult science.''
Dr. Feynman also devoted himself to
cracking the combination safes that had been installed to protect the
bomb secrets - the plutonium production schedules, the construction
dimensions, the neutron radiation data, ''the whole schmeer,'' as he
wrote later. When the responsible officers turned their backs he would
unlock the steel doors and leave notes with messages like, ''I borrowed
document No. LA4312 - Feynman the safecracker.''
''I don't
feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious
universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is, so far as I
can tell,'' he added. ''It doesn't frighten me.''
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