A Critical Review of Richard Feynman's "Why Do You Care What Other People Think?"

Richard Feynman was a scientist who dedicate his life to his work. What set him apart from other scientists was his acceptance of science into everyday life. A problem that many “average” people have with science is that it seems to go over their heads. It is a misconception that if you are scientific, you are not artistic or vise versa. It is a very alienating field of work, but Feynman was able to create a harmony between science and self expression. Through this, he was actually able to make non scientific minds think in a slightly more critical way. Unlike The Double Helix, Feynman was able to put his work in layman’s terms so readers outside of the scientific world were able to grasp and understand the concepts of the book. It is not until the appendix that the accounts of the Challenger incident become harder to grasp, but it is understood that those reading that piece of work would be professionals. With a balance between intriguing storytelling of his personal life and the accounts of his work on the Challenger crash, Feynman is able to capture the hearts of his readers who at the end of the book, not only care about him as a scientist, but care about him as a person. His constant questioning of everything that was in from him, which seemed to give him slight issues, are actually what made him so important to the investigation of the explosion.

The purpose of this book, which Feynman succeeds in reiterating, is not only to teach those who do not understand the world of science, but to show the beauty and the art that can be seen through science. In the first chapter of the book, Feynman explains a conversation he had with a friend who was an artist. His friend stated that as an artist, he could look at a flower and see the beauty in it, but because Feynman was a scientist, he could only bypass the beauty and make it dull by tearing it apart and analyzing it . Feynman justifies himself by stating that as a scientist, he is able to appreciate the beauty...