Milton Friedman and Richard Feynman

Dr. Helen asks what would Milton Friedman say? She posts on Stephen Moore’s speculation in his recent book regarding what Milton Friedman would say about our nations current economic crisis and move towards socialism.

I would like to know what Richard Feynman would have to say about the CRU and global warming. Truly, I would have liked to hear his opinion before this scandal. Feynman worshipped no one and had little use for elitists. As an adult, he also had the enthusiasm and curiosity of a child.

Here’s an excerpt from his lecture to the National Science Teachers Association in 1966…

We have many studies in teaching, for example, in which people make observations, make lists, do statistics, and so on, but these do not thereby become established science, established knowledge. They are merely an imitative form of science analogous to the South Sea Islanders’ airfields–radio towers, etc., made out of wood. The islanders expect a great airplane to arrive. They even build wooden airplanes of the same shape as they see in the foreigners’ airfields around them, but strangely enough, their wood planes do not fly. The result of this pseudoscientific imitation is to produce experts, which many of you are. [But] you teachers, who are really teaching children at the bottom of the heap, can maybe doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. (emphasis added – ed)


Friedman and Feynman would be great additions to today’s world. They haven’t been gone long, but they are truly missed in this time of financial and intellectual crisis.

RIP gentlemen.

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