Richard Feynman, 1965
Some brilliant explanations, simple and convincing. Not everything is, however. Feynman discloses a deep knowledge of, and interest in, the history of physics. I found interesting his attempt to show on an example, a thought experiment, that one cannot use irreversibility of time (the second principle of thermodynamics) to produce order (in a perpetuum mobile). I was surprised he doesn't mention any experiments concerning dynamic order away from the equilibrium.
1. The Law of Gravitation as an example of Physical Law, p 3
I would like to be understood in an honest way rather than in a vague way.
p 21
It is impossible, by the way, by picking one of anything to pick one that is not atypical in some sense. That is the wonder of the world.
5. The Distinction of Past and Future, p 106
It is not against the laws of physics that the molecules bounce around so that they separate. It is just unlikely. It would never happen in a million years.
p 108
[The Historian makes] a kind of prediction about something he has never looked at before, documents that have still to be found. [...] the only way that is possible is to suggest that the past of the world was more organized in this sense than the present.
pp 113-115
There is a great difference between energy and availability of energy. The energy of the sea is a large amount, but it is not available to us.
[...]
So the one-way-ness is always to the loss of availability of energy.
6. Probability and Uncertainty, p 141
A philosopher once said 'It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always produce the same results'. Well, they do not.