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Yes, I'm not denying that he was unconventionally an incredibly talented physicist. But in the process of figuring out his process (and the processes of lots o

Yes, I'm not denying that he was unconventionally an incredibly talented physicist. But in the process of figuring out his process (and the processes of lots of 'brilliant' people), we discover that we can't pinpoint exactly WHY or HOW he worked. That's the point. Nobody can. He was a human being and he certainly had flaws, which I imagine he'd be happy to acknowledge. I just dislike putting people onto pedestals like this. If you had hung out with him over a beer, I'm willing to bet you'd be surprised how normal of a person he was.

mturmon 16y ago
Of course he had lots of flaws. But he does deserve a pedestal, actually. (All those folks on pedestals have flaws; some of them don't deserve their pedestal at all; Feynmann does.) Also, I don't think he was a very "normal person". Being that brilliant tends to make you not very normal -- although he could impersonate a particularly sharp "normal person" if it seemed advantageous. Read some anecdotes about his career and life -- for instance, the time he had a concussion and acted weird for about three weeks before anyone thought something was really the matter. That's not a "normal person". It seems to me that you're letting your desire to not idolize him, get in the way of recognizing the reality of his genius and what he accomplished. That's not fair to reality.